I think that we sometimes evaluate mowers based on features and benefits and little or no research is done to determine the true performance level of the machine.

Keep in mind that features and benefits can be duplicated for the brochure but not many manufacturers are enforcing rigid test criteria, if they are testing at all.

Downtime failures or the average number of hours of operation between them is rarely discussed and if it is the answer will most likely be that the machine has a good warranty.

Good warranties are important but if you have to use them very often the downtime associated with them is very costly.

If you are a homeowner downtime failures are a major problem that consumes much of your spare time, not to mention the frustration and trips to and from the repair shop.

If you are a professional lawn care service, the frequency of downtime failures can be the difference between profit and loss.

Some manufacturers have gone to great lengths to design and test their products so you can count on many hours of trouble free service.

Others have tried to copy their designs with little attention to detail and with little or no testing.

I would like to start this blog with feed back from you so we can rank products based on the number of hours between downtime failures.

Downtime failures are anything that stops you from cutting grass that can be attributed to the design or assembly of the product. Obviously we don’t count when you run out of gas, puncture a tire or drop the machine off of the trailer onto the interstate.

Everyone has downtime failures but the ones who are doing the best job of designing and testing their products have fewer. If you take the number of downtime failures and divide it into the total number of hours on your machine you will come up with the average hours between downtime failures. This is the number we want to compare.

I have seen machines that were considered to be top of the line that when tested would have downtime failure rates in the 20 hour range.

No problem is too small to count as a failure. I have seen machine that were totally unacceptable that never suffered from a big issue but simply had many small failures.

Give us some feedback.