The variety of applications that we get into with equipment, it seems almost unending sometimes. We do a lot of talking here on our channels about compact tractors, and utility tractors, and farm tractors and that kind of stuff but we also sell equipment into municipal applications as well. One of the most common applications that we see is highway mowing, where guys run in off-wheels and that kind of stuff to cut along road banks.
In this case, a long parallel arm ditch bank cutter to reach out over top of the long bank and maintain properties and grasses down over the sides of embankments. In this case here, this is a Land Pride cutter. We're going to do a walk around here and show you a little bit about this piece and see if it seems like it's something interesting, just enjoying some of the unique stuff that we see on tractors sometimes. There's several different highway mowing systems that we sell. We're also a dealer for Alamo products, which makes some really large and very, very commercial oriented pieces.
One of the drawbacks in some of their equipment is that when you install their pieces onto a tractor you really tie up the tractor and you dedicate it to that use. A long, say, extreme mower with a 22 foot reach over the side isn't something you're reasonably going to remove from that tractor from season to season. This Land Pride setup is a little bit different and that this whole piece can sit on the tractor's three point hitch and can very easily go on and off a machine. That's not to say that there's no setup here. This is a really big, really heavy piece. The tractor has to be balanced out property to support it when the arm is hanging way out over the side.
Land Pride typically specs this for a 75 to 150 horsepower tractor, weighing at least 7,000 pounds. Even then, there is weight brackets and stuff over here on the side where you'd want to hang additional weights depending on the ballasting of your tractor and stuff to offset the weight of this large mower. There is prep work to setting up your machine to operate this but it doesn't necessarily dedicate your machine to doing absolutely nothing but mowing like some other setups would. If you look at this arm here, there are four different hydraulic functions on here.
One that's worked off of this tractor's we remote that swings the mower this direction. It's storage and transport position is the whole way behind here and fold it up to give it a 10 foot transport lift. The first thing you want to do here is you pull your hydraulic remote to swing the mower out away from the tractor. Once it's away, we'll go over the controls in the cab, but you've got three additional electric hydraulic functions. You run your PTO which runs a PTO pump here off of this reservoir here on the back. Your additional hydraulic functions are these two cylinders right here in the parallel arm in order to swing the thing out, a pump right up here on the top that runs the motor.
Between those, the swing, the two for the arms and the pump, it kind of gives you all the range emotion -- I'm sorry, I missed one here. Another cylinder up here on the top of the deck in order to raise the deck this direction. Total of one, two, three, four electric functions and one rear remote function, so five functions on this mower. When that parallel arm is stretched the whole way out you can get 15 and a half feet of reach away from the tractor. This is the 60 inch cutter version here. There's also 72 inch versions of this as well. It's a really unique piece for a really unique application, but something that is really cool too.
If you hop up here in the cab with me I will show you the controls of how this monster works. I'm sitting at the cab of the tractor here. I said there's one function that's done off of the tractor's single hydraulic remote, and that's the swing right here. When I take this function front and back I'm able to swing the mower out to the side of the machine. The rest of the functions right here are on this motor stick. Normally, this would go on top of the loader control valve. We just had this thing set up right now to take to trade shows and stuff. It's not actually installed fully on the machine.
Normally, you'd pull off the little ball end on the end of the motor stick and replace it with this multi-function control. Once this is out to operate the rest of the controls here, you need to turn the PTO on on the tractor that runs the pump. Then you have two buttons for the arm, one that operates the inside cylinder here, and then a second that operates the further out arm cylinder. Both of these can actually be used in unison if you're somehow talented enough to push them at the same time. You could see a neat aspect of this parallel link as these things lower down, it does roll itself back at the same time.
It is keeping itself relatively level as the thing goes in and out. It's not lowering the entire arm down to the ground as it lowers. Those two functions will do my boom. Then the end function right down here can raise my deck up and down the valve, the contour, the ground. With this now set the whole way out I can lower that down to the ground. Then I've got a float position here on my loader stick that will relax all of those and allow this thing to go down to the ground. We're going to give the tractor some revs and turn the mower on.
Now with that guy running I'm going to take the tractor here, slide it into first gear and slowly drive forward. That's a Land Pride Boom Mower. If you have any unique mowing applications or other unique situations that you could use some attachments for your tractor, give us a call here at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at www.messicks.com.
