Is the grass greener?
Many from county make long commute to Moundridge factory
Staff writer
Although the 350,000-square-foot manufacturing campus for Grasshopper Mowers lies in McPherson County, outside Moundridge, 10% of its 280 employees hail from Marion County, with many workers making the 40-minute commute each day.
Michael Simmon, who works in marketing communications at Grasshopper (and who commutes 40 minutes himself from Sedgwick County), said Marion residents appreciated the pay, the work environment, and job stability.
“Obviously, this is a manufacturing facility,” Simmon said. “It can be hot in the summer, dirty and that kind of thing, but you’ve got a skill you’re learning or that you’re putting to work. You’re a valuable piece of the chain. When we have highly skilled labor that’s working on all these robots and stuff like that, it’s not like that person could just be replaced.”
The Grasshopper brand has been in business for 60 years. Beginning out of founder Elbert Guyer’s garage in Osborne, Grasshopper’s high-end lawn mowers quickly became popular with American and foreign consumers.
Today, the mowers are even used at the White House.
Twelve percent of the company’s products go to foreign or export markets.
“We’ve even been recognized by the state and by the U.S. Department of Commerce for our efforts to increase and support the export of American products worldwide,” Simmons said.
Their equipment’s durability is another reason Grasshopper has proved so successful.
The company won the Dealer’s Choice award from the Equipment Dealers Association in 2024, the fourth time in 10 years.
“Dealers like the fact that they can sell our mowers and not have to worry about it down the line,” Simmon said. “If you’re going to be out mowing rough ground or rough terrain or whatever you might be facing, you need a durable piece of equipment. The thing at Home Depot is not going to get the job done for you.”
Inside Grasshopper’s deceptively large manufacturing campus, robots and humans work hand-in-claw, bending and welding metal parts to construct a variety of different machines.
Simmon said that although automation has shot up in the past 20 years, the number of Grasshopper employees has remained constant.
“Even as we’ve expanded to have more robots, we’ve taken a person doing a very manual job [and] we’ve made them more productive, so that they can create more stuff,” he said. “We can create more pieces, whether that’s whole mowers or replacement parts.”
In addition to fabrication, welding, and assembly departments, the Moundridge campus features an office, conference rooms, a parts and shipping warehouse, and a section where mowers are painted.
Grasshopper uses mainly American steel and assembles all equipment in-house.
It produces thousands of mowers per year, according to Simmon. He is hesitant to give a more exact number, saying it is information Grasshopper’s competitors could take advantage of.
The Marion County Record was unable to take pictures inside the manufacturing campus for the same reason.
The company profits from selling spare parts.
“We get hundreds if not thousands of orders a day, depending on the season, just for parts,” Simmons said.
Grasshopper has an online storefront, and though there isn’t much demand for parts during wintertime, orders pour in come spring.
While droughts across the U.S. as well as iffy economic conditions have made it an “odd year” for the mowing industry, Simmon said he wasn’t worried about Grasshopper’s long-term prospects.
“It’s not been a ‘sky is falling’ type of thing,” he said, “certainly no worse than what we had to deal with in COVID.”
Simmon praised Grasshopper’s staff for keeping the sprawling facility producing.
The employees seem to possess the same kind of longevity as the company’s equipment.
“It doesn’t really matter where they’re from, if they’re from Marion County or wherever else,” he said. “They’re typically hard-working, dedicated. … A lot of people work here for 15 or more years. It’s not just a throwaway job for most people.”