Colton Joint Unified School District and Mountain View School District in California both have large areas of sports field to maintain and needed a reliable, low-maintenance mower to do it. Jose Gonzalez and Stefan Treadway from Colton, and Andy Urias from Mountain View, explain what the Trimax Pegasus has changed for their grounds crews.
Hours Saved on the Biggest Field
Andy Urias has worked at Mountain View School District for 23 years, and the Pegasus the district runs has been with them for around 12 or 13 of those. “It’s been good to us,” he says. The biggest field shows why. “We just hook up to the three-point tractor attachment and you go mow. We do about two schools a day and then we have to do the perimeters as well. Our biggest field, if we cut that with our smaller mower, it would take about six to eight hours. This one, about two hours. So the cutting time is a huge difference.”
Fewer Breakdowns, Longer-Lasting Blades
Colton picked up its Pegasus about a year ago, and Jose Gonzalez, the district’s equipment mechanic, calls it “a great asset to our fleet.” Before it, he says, the same tractor ran hydraulically driven rotary mowers, and the repairs added up. “We had a lot of issues with hoses breaking, hydraulic motors going out, main pumps giving problems, solenoid sensors and valves that will give out. It’s a night and day difference. Maintenance is very minimum. I mean grease, we haven’t had any issues with major breakdowns on the same tractor.”
The blades are part of the reason. They swing back on impact, so a hidden gopher mound, rock, root or piece of sidewalk doesn’t damage the main spindle. They also last. The set on the mower is only the second since Colton bought it, and Jose says the first set “could have gone another maybe six months.” Now, “the only time the machine is here is for greasing and cleaning, and not even blades, because they lasted a year.”
A Good Cut on Any Ground
Stefan Treadway was looking for something that would serve Colton well into the future. “I saw this on YouTube. I got to see one in person and right away I knew the quality was what we were looking for.” The cut sealed it. “It didn’t matter if it was very tall grass or short grass, the cut was always good, and the discharge, you didn’t leave big piles of grass everywhere.”
Jose points to the rollers for the district’s uneven fields. “It’s basically an articulating deck system. It follows the slopes, no problem. Going through uneven terrain, valleys and ups and downs, you’re never going to scalp anything.”
Built for the Real World
Colton’s fields aren’t always perfect, and the crew doesn’t always get to them on schedule. “Our fields are not the neatest fields out there,” Jose says. “There’s areas where it’s so thick that even the zero-turn mowers have a hard time going through. But with this machine, I’ve noticed the guys sometimes skip a week or two and the grass is tall and it just keeps going.”
It’s also quick to learn. “The learning curve on this thing, I’m going to say maybe tops 30 minutes.” His advice to other districts is simple: “Look into something like this, because it cuts down your cutting time and it frees you up to do other things. It’s a simple machine. It not only does the job, it does a great job at it.”
