Factory Tour and Other Happenings

Our entire crew (Chad, Dave, Omar, Angel, Jake, and I) had a very interesting start to the week.  On Monday, we had the opportunity to tour the Toro manufacturing facility and distribution center in Tomah.  It's at this plant that Toro makes the bulk of the equipment that's used on golf courses and in other commercial applications.  Here, they weld the frames, paint the metal components, and attach the hundreds of other items that the machines require.  It was fascinating to see the organization that's necessary for a plant of 550 workers to take hunks of steel and turn them into highly-specialized pieces of equipment.  To say that we have a better appreciation for what it takes to manufacture the machines that we use on a daily basis is an understatement.  It surprised us to learn that materials make up 90% of the cost of these mowers, and if anyone's interested, they sell an 18' rough mower for just a touch above $100,000.

Once the mowers, sprayers, utility vehicles, etc. are assembled at the manufacturing facility, they are shipped a few miles down the road to their distribution center.  With the rows and rows of new equipment, we were like kids in a candy store.  Unfortunately, it's very expensive candy, and they didn't give any free samples.  It was interesting to learn that almost 50% of their equipment is sold overseas.  We had a great time and certainly appreciated the glimpse inside Toro's operations.

Speaking of equipment, below is a picture of the metal bed that our 300 gallon sprayer tank rests on:

Inevitably, some of the fertilizers and plant protectants that are loaded into the sprayer run down the outside of the tank and are squeezed between the plastic tank and the metal bed.  As you can imagine, this is quite corrosive, and the above picture is a great illustration of the effects of this corrosion.  A new metal bed costs $800, but every 3-4 years, we sand off the loose paint/rust and recoat the metal.  For a few hours of labor and a couple of bucks worth of paint, we're able to keep the bed like-new.  This is just one small example of the preventative maintenance that takes place in winter that saves the club money in the long run.

Besides equipment maintenance, you're also probably aware that the lack of significant snow cover has allowed to take care of a lot of the tree removal and trimming that's normally done in the summer.  Last week, we removed an overcrowded ash tree between 3 and 4 and a dying ash tree just past the dogleg on the left side of number 6.  Based on our visual observations over the past three years, we knew that the tree on 6 was declining, but once it hit the ground, we were able to see just how bad of condition that it was in.

Normally, when a relatively healthy tree comes down, just a few branches will snap off.  When this tree fell, it's canopy exploded into a million little rotten pieces, and the above picture shows just that.

Otherwise, our winter work is progressing as planned, and we're looking forward to the start of the 2012 golf season; I'm sure that you are, too!