Lifelong Gas User Accelerates Business with Battery Power

Phoenix Landscaping is based in Orlando, Florida, and works on a variety of properties, including many Marriott resorts. When Shawn Logan founded Phoenix Landscaping in 2020, he started as a lifelong user and supporter of gas-powered tools.

“I was probably the most skeptical person,” he says. “I grew up, you know, building muscle cars, loving hot rods, and I loved my old Stihl weed eaters that made the “ting” sound every time you let off the throttle. To me, battery was just never going to be anything that would keep up with what we needed.”

Experienced landscapers who have tried battery-powered alternatives years ago are often skeptics. Gas-powered tools have been the standard in commercial landscaping for decades, and older battery-powered tools couldn’t keep up.

“The landscaping industry is not historically an environmentally friendly industry,” says Kylee Logan, Director of Community Outreach with Phoenix Landscaping, and she’s right. But times are changing around the nation, as emission rules and noise ordinances reveal some of the many downsides of gas power. Battery technology improves every year, while gas engines are stuck in the past. For many commercial landscaping companies, the benefits of battery power have grown to outweigh the costs.

For Shawn, the change started when he saw the capabilities of the Greenworks Optimus Zero-Turn Mower. One of his properties includes a large grassy hill that could challenge his mightiest gas-powered zero-turn. He decided to use this hill as the test for evaluating his battery-powered options.

“So, before we bought the Greenworks,” Shawn says, “we tested like every other brand—Mean Green, Gravely, Toro—and every single one of them, we brought to this hill, just because of how steep it is. Our gas-powered mowers can do it, but it's kind of scary—you slide down the bottom every now and then.”

 So, how did Greenworks perform on this steep hill? Our engineers and product design team listen to real feedback from real landscapers, so we know the risks of steep hills and wet grass. That’s why we designed the Optimus Zero-Turn Mowers with a low center-of-gravity, all-terrain traction wheels, and powerful brushless motor technology.  

Everyone knows that battery technology is better for deploying reliable and controlled power quickly—just look at how modern electric cars outperform gas engines—but raw power isn’t the only advantage. For a cost-conscious company president like Shawn, the savings at the gas pump are also a major motivator.

“Gas savings are huge, absolutely huge,” Shawn says. “All our on-site crews, nobody uses gas anymore for anything. I'll put it this way—we used to get close to our credit limit on our gas cards every month. Now we're not even hitting 50%.”

Modern batteries are longer-lasting and recharge faster than ever before, letting commercial crews work all day without a problem. Compared to long visits to the gas station between jobs, Shawn sees the advantage of battery. He says, “It makes a lot of sense, because I can run a five-man crew for 40 hours a week on the same property with 18 batteries. They charge eight or nine of them up in the morning, and then at lunch they swap all their batteries out and charge them again, but they never leave the property.”

The longevity of modern battery tools, like the Greenworks Commercial Optimus lineup, is a big selling point. “You don't have to worry about them stopping every day for two cycles at the gas station and spending an extra 30 or 40 minutes there,” Shawn says. Less time sitting at the pump means more time on the job, more profit, faster completion times, and happier customers.

Kylee and Shawn are both enjoying the advantages of battery power. For Kylee, the opportunity to be a leader in environmental stewardship made the difference. “Being able to change [our environmental impact],” she says, “is just a small effort that we can make, together, and maybe inspire other companies to do the same.”

Of course, Greenworks tools aren’t just better for the environment. They are also superior lawn equipment, with more power, better performance in heavy-duty jobs, longer runtimes, and more quality-of-life features.

“We tested everything,” Shawn says, “And Greenworks was just where we landed.

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