I am all about efficiency. I believe for a small landscaper to make a living you have to do things better than the “Craftsman mower and a pickup” guys and much more efficiently than the larger firms.
Because of that philosophy I was using “zero-turn” mowers before they even existed (Gravely ProMaster 50) and when Dane Skagg introduced the Great Dane Surfer back in the mid 1996 I immediately bought one. I loved the machine. It was fast and it saved me many hours over the Toro walk-behind’s and Gravely 100′s that I had been using.
Gravely ProMaster 50 "zero-turn"
But I also hated it. The machine wasn’t balanced quite right. I weighed 250 lbs and there were a lot of times when the front of the mower was off the ground. Then there was the design problems. The front caster wheels were too small. The drives were too small and overheated. There was too much stress on the unit where the deck and drive frame joined and the deck cracked. (Great Dane eventually fixed all of these problems and gave us free mods)
- Original Surfer
But the biggest problem was the fixed deck. With the fixed deck it always got stuck going on and off the trailer and was a real pain trying to get it up over curbs (Almost as bad as the Scag Turf Runner) I had to carry a homemade ramp with me just to get up on curbs. The problem was bad enough that I seriously looked at the Wright standers when they came out in 1996 to replace the mower. But at the time the closest dealer was 100 miles away.
I spent hours using the Surfer and thinking about what Skagg could do to improve this machine. Finally I came up with the solution. I took a picture of a Great Dane Chariot, a picture of the Surfer and digitally combined them. That picture fixed the front caster problem, the frame integrity problem, the balance problem, and the curb problem.
I took that picture with me to the International Lawn & Garden Expo (now the GIE-Expo) that year and personally handed it to Mr Skagg. We talked about the picture for a few minutes and six months later…………the Great Dane Super Surfer was put into production.
The rest is history.
The Picture I Gave to Mr. Skagg
