Greg Moyer, product manager for John Deere, explains what the company highlighted at Equip Expo 2024.
Green Industry Pros: What are you introducing this year at Equip?
Moyer: A big thing we're introducing this year are the EFI models. We’re introducing several new models ranging from 30 horsepower up to 40 horsepower. There are some new technologies we're introducing with these EFI models. One is an advanced display that really ties into our connectivity this year. Additionally, we are also introducing an oil guard system. The biggest benefit of this oil guard system is it allows our professional landscaping contractors to extend the service intervals from 100 hours up to 500 hours. Now, instead of having to change your oil midseason, sometimes in the height of the mowing season, you can, for many of our contractors, extend that to more of an annual.
You’re going to get more fuel efficiencies. That’s really what our customers are most interested in, because fuel efficiencies help cut down on the emissions, yeah, but just as importantly, it helps the professional landscaping contractors take that money and put it back into their business. It’s just a smoother operation. With the technology and connectivity, you get a lot more information from EFI machines because there's an engine control unit that'll feed a lot of useful information our landscapers optimize fleet.
Green Industry Pros: And what are some of the challenges and trends you’re trying to help customers with?
Moyer: Labor has been a big chunk. If we can reduce the labor burden, that's been a big focus for us. We’re been offering a number of different deck sizes, you know, maybe even expanding those deck sizes. Additionally, it’s trying to reduce the maintenance burden. If your labor costs have been going up, you can ease that in some ways by implementing some of the technologies and track your labor more closely with connectivity.
The demand for that (connectivity) has been much, much higher. The need for that is much more intense than when we went to market last year, for sure.
