Brutally testing new lawn mowing equipment

all right guys we got a jam-packed show today because we're going to be testing out something called a cart mate and what it does is it goes on the front of a lawnmower and turns them into mini loaders kind of basically it allows you to use your lawnmower to carry heavy stuff which i thought would be ideal for landscapers or new guys getting into the industry all right good morning everybody here's the plan for today stan gave me a call and got pallet dropped off don't know what it is but a simple solution to that problem open her up so we are going to do just that and find out what is in there together i was gonna ask you about that but i'll i'll open it up after i get the palette and see bracket yes that is for this it's got to be okay oof well i hit my motorcycle nice yeah here you go what do we have in box number one oh boy [Music] all right so next uh we're gonna run down to the yard grab a couple of mowers put these together and uh yeah take it from there this one and then we need that one before we can do it we got to get these things to fire up and it's january so they may not want to wake up out of their sleep now they make two versions of this so i ordered both they they've got a big one with dual wheels and then they've got a smaller one so i'm gonna pull two lawn mowers off my big lawnmower out my sick gravely 60 inch and my 48 inch starus stand on just to see how they do on the different mowers [Music] the drink of the day you guys is called frut fru squiggly lime tea and it's natural strawberry it's not sparkling it's just regular strawberry flavored water and it's really good but it's not sparkling but it's still kind of good for not sparkling oh that was my camera that flung off of there lawnmowers on ice are really fun [Music] well like i was saying a regular day at work we got the lawnmowers out in freaking january i'm shipping ice off the skid steer trailer while stan's over there whipping donuts in the gravely it's a regular day at work [Music] i think [Music] i think that warmed it up so let's talk about the basic difference between the pro version and the rs unit the rs unit runs even though it's about half the price it runs a single wheel and it's got a smaller uh bucket to carry materials with it also doesn't have a hitch which allows it to freely rotate the pro model runs dual wheels which go in and out and it's got the hitch allows you to tip the whole thing over which we test out without wrecking anything but we didn't know that when we tested it out really at least i didn't i think sam did wow i think this is gonna be a two day video huh yeah maybe a little bit the goal is to get some firewood brought up using that new cart mate thing but before we go traipsing all over the snow turning it into ice on the deck let's get her clear i want to get the snow cleared up before everybody walks over it and basically turns it into compressed ice [Music] so all right so we got these put together yesterday uh next we got to put the hitch thing this thing on there so that we can get them mounted this looks like it's going to be pretty slick they just got this cross member here and you can adjust it to get it to where it needs to be this plate goes on the bottom you just bolt it on there and then the hitch goes on the front there there's a plate on the back you just bolt it down there and adjust it as needed so well pretty straightforward fairly idiot proof it is cold in minnesota okay got that where it says it should be we might have to tweak it that's the hitch that allows the entire unit to freely rotate without tweaking the framework or the bracing that goes on the mower so overall the build quality on this thing is absolutely amazing the guys that built this thing did a great job on this there's no compromise on materials we can swing them out too so i figured a good test for this thing would be to haul some firewood because it's fairly heavy material but to get to it is going to be a challenge oh it is going to be fun getting those lawnmowers down here and even plowing this out like this i really need to get right down to gravel or those turf tires on that lawnmower just aren't gonna cut it not moving your legs out of the way man must be your first time yeah so we don't have the wheels widened out right now and you you're just gonna see what i think happens need to make the wheels wide i think we need to swing the wheels out on the next load it didn't break anything did we break any no they so if that happens this floats in here loose see how they you can see they got a i can't remember what those are cause i'm cold and tired but this will this will spin in there okay hypothetically hypothetically oh and this is a great chance to take a look at you can make these wheels wider just by flipping yeah so you pull this pin pull that pin and then they swing out and bingo bango bingo bangle now we gotta flip it over the other way let's flip it the opposite way this should be pretty easy with a quarter cord of wood in it easy peasy dude that was it that's it we're good to go [Music] widen your wheels that'll probably work a little better probably except now i'm stuck in the cell so before we load her down get your way out get on out of there yeah yeah so you can swing these you can swing the wheelbase out they can they'll be you know going straight forward or you swing it out on that 45 like that but you can use them like a wheelbarrow too you can just uh it's got the handles and it just it disconnects but then down here you pull it you can pull the pin and then use the handles and it'll dump nice same thing with uh what's the benefit of swinging them in i want you to get through a fence yeah get through a gate yep okay and as we discovered if you're too skinny you go for a ride and park down an incline we mean you go for a ride we just tipped it over yeah and nothing was wrecked the whole thing it tipped over because tipped over sideways yup yeah we had her piled up kind of high too but how they got this thing rigged up right here is kind of slick i was really complaining about getting this on yesterday uh this piece i was really yeah i was really complaining about getting that on that was kind of a pain in the butt but it's pretty ingenious for like if it tips this spins it that spins in there freely so it doesn't you're not you're not wrecking anything yeah it doesn't ruin nothing it's got one i can't remember what these are called but it's got yeah one of those in there that you know it pivots on so this could do you could do a 360 with this thing and not break anything nice yeah that's kind of cool well now we can just load it up see if the mower can push it up this snow hill i don't know about that but we'll find out we'll do it together put some chains on her that's what she [Music] said i smell you cooking that fuel tim god it stinks where's choke this big lever see if he turns the parking brake off nope here we go lawn mowers and snow don't go together so well [Applause] that's the wrong direction tim oh [Music] oh tim's gonna get her wrapped he's gonna get her wrapped [Music] and buried wrapped and buried no he ain't got her i'll bet he doesn't have her he's just gonna get her wrapped and buried snow we'll let them to play so on the next load we're not going down the hill because that's what happened we got a second pile of wood up closer i just want to see how the mower handles it without trying to climb up that slick ice hill and it handles it like nobody's business i mean even a full load of wood on the front there the mower just just hogged it up no issues but now we're going to stick the rs unit on the starus stand on this is the pro unit with the two wheels now we're going to the single wheeled unit okay sam's going to show us how the smaller this is the rs cart can be also be used as a wheelbarrow you just locked the tire right sam yep so you're going to use that there's a pin a pin you pull and then these come on down this they actually so they put this is a separate piece right okay put an extra set of holes so this hole this hole in this hole are all extras so you can hold your pins nice yes but you can put the pins in [Music] and this one also has a kickstand too right yep so i'll show you the kickstand pull that off of there and move that now the rs unit also doesn't have that rotating hitch on it so if you tip this one over you could be damaging something there yeah now you got your handles yep also yeah the handles so then for these they fold up and then you pull these pins okay and they fold out pin them either back through there and you can move they have another spot where you can move this this bolt down one and that will raise the height of the handles oh on it if you need if you want them a little higher it's not too much to give you about another inch though okay to lift them up if you want so so now you've got a functioning wheelbarrow yep you just take the kickstand down if you want yep it folds on down like that for or you can leave it up down or you leave it up just like a regular wheelbarrow and kitty wampus or does it balance okay yeah no it bounces good i was wheeling around like this the other the other night um so it handles a lot like a regular wheelbarrow sounds like a regular wheelbarrow i like that it has a wider tire on the front though that's kind of nice it seems like it gives you a little bit more um kind of stability stability that's like twice the size of the regular wheelbarrow it does work is it is it really oh actually probably not a little more a little more but it's maybe a little fatter but that's what i meant it's a little wider okay well let's hook it up to the mower and let's load it up and see how it works on the mower because i think people are going to want to know that i'm just kind of i'm just excited about this this bit i like how they did this so it's like that doesn't bounce up yep they want to stay there sit they want them staggered like that staggered and it won't bounce yep all right this one doesn't have the articulate you know it obviously doesn't have the articulating thing on there like that other one does so yeah that's pretty nice yeah but let's see what this one can handle we've got her hooked up to the stars let's give her a go [Music] now i'm more worried about what the stars can handle than what the cart mate can handle so we're gonna go light at first and then we're just gonna amp it up a little bit but it's also connected via the frame right to the machine so it's not likely to just give it a tip [Music] this rs model reminds me of something that would be great for around the house if you're going to be using it yourself and you're going to take time the pro model if you're going to be sending it out with crews absolutely because they're going to be rougher and tougher on it and the pro model is definitely built to handle the abuse with the dual wheels and that rotating system but if you're going to be working if you're going to be using it on your own the rs unit is just fine so the way i look at it i'm keeping the rs for me and i'm giving the cartmate pro to the guys for the job sites [Music] like sam says when we're going to go out and we've got to move materials and we're going to be freshening up mulch beds and we don't want to destroy sod or turf this thing is the answer to that and if you don't have a 50 some thousand dollar mini loader that can drive on grass this is the answer to that yeah and if you guys want to find out more information i would either go to mulchmate or cartmate i should probably look that up you know what i'll put a link in in the description down below and i just wanted to find out is this actually a viable option you know i own that mini loader but that's 50 some thousand dollars as much as i love that it's out of the price range for a lot of people but would this cart kind of start to do some of the things that my mini loader would do allow me to get mulch into materials without tearing up turf and grass and it's one of those aha moments maybe a guy can't afford fifty thousand dollars but they can't afford like hundred dollars for the pro series and a thousand for the rs series and get a job done yeah no plywood no carrying plywood out think about that yeah these things are slick but we'll find out more because we are going to be putting them to work this summer that's our video for today god bless you guys go get them we'll be checking it out if you guys have used these before let me know what you think in the comments down below and hopefully we'll see on another one catch you later