After looking and pricing lots of zero turns, I ended up with a Gravely HD60. This is a homeowners mower, but it has decent components, like a Kawasaki motor and the same hydraulics found on most of the good competitors. The deck is the same as the bottom line commercial deck from Gravely and is pretty heavy. I only have 2.9 hours on it so far. That is from cutting all my current "yard", with some redo when I found out I didn't have the deck adjusted correctly. Since this same mowing took me about 4.5 hours with my old rider I am happy. This thing cuts as fast as it will run, in fairly high grass. I have some slopes to worry about but I think I'll be able to handle almost everything I need to do.

I still need to convince my feet that they don't have anything to do with making the mower run or stop. They just don't yet get it. I bet about 0.5 of that 2.9 hours was used in that kind of foolishness.

So....how do you guys with zero turns work on your mowing decks when needed? If you don't have one of the machines with a tilting deck do you drive it up on ramps or lift the front end somehow? I hope I don't need to worry about it until next season, but I'm planning ahead, for once!

Chuck