CHARLOTTE, N.C – Maintaining the landscape along North Carolina’s heavily traveled roads can be a dangerous job. I-77 Mobility Partners recently invested in a remote-controlled mower that is intended to improve safety and efficiency.
“You’ll see a lot of people driving with cell phones going 70 miles per hour,” Shawn Marshall said. “I hope it never happens, but one day somebody will be looking at their cell phone and cause an accident… and you never know who might be out there cutting grass.”
Marshall is the lead maintenance technician with I-77 Mobility Partners, which handles the express lanes on I-77 between Mooresville and Charlotte.
He is one of the first employees to test out the company’s newest tool, a remote-controlled mower.
“It’s just like a remote-control car,” Marshall said.
The device, which is owned by a Wisconsin-based company, allows workers to cut grass in hard to reach places, and they’re able to maneuver it standing as far as three football fields away.
“If something happens to the machine, we can always replace the machine,” Marshall said. “But you can’t replace the human body.”
The remote-controlled mower can climb up steep slopes too.
Senior manager Heath Holland believes it’s an important feature given how unsafe it is to mow up sharp inclines.
“[During my last job at NCDOT] we had a couple of larger tractors trying to mow slopes that are 45 to 50 degrees,” Holland said. “And unfortunately I’ve seen a couple of those flip over with an operator on them, usually resulting in an injury to the operator.”
Holland says the new mower aligns with the company’s top priority, which is safety. And as an employee, Marshall says he’s thankful and looks forward to using it this Spring.
“We’ll see how everything works out for [the remote-controlled mower],” Marshall said. “And see if it’s going to benefit us, which I’m sure it will.”
Holland also says the remote-controlled mower is efficient. He says it can do the work of six employees in an hour, and it runs about eight hours on one tank of fuel.