It was my privilege last week to attend what I believe is the largest outdoor power equipment trade show in the world, Equip Expo.

I was in Kentucky from Monday till Friday, with the TurfPro contingent which comprised of owner of the title Duncan Murray-Clarke and the winners of the OPEI's competition that ran through our pages to visit the show - Danny Lewis, landscape contracts manager at Manchester City FC and professional dealer Pete McArthur of Strathbogie Forest & Garden.

These guys were invited to join a panel discussion at the event, comparing and contrasting their roles in the UK with a couple of U.S contemporaries. It was a fascinating session with Danny and Pete both speaking brilliantly. What certainly appeared to come out of it, is that perhaps we in the UK are a year or two ahead when it comes to the uptake of battery and robotic products.

Show time

The event proper got underway on Wednesday, with Tuesday seeing the opening welcome celebration of the show, held at Slugger Field, home of the Louisville Bats baseball team.

The gathering of professional end users, dealers, manufacturers and groundscare specialists from across the U.S and around the world was celebrated with fireworks, hot dogs and the odd tipple - in anticipation of the main show kicking off.

Wednesday however saw the vast inside and outside showground open its doors to the huge numbers who've travelled here to Kentucky to experience this ever-more impressive show.

Seriously impressive

As is traditional, the show was open first to a dealer-only audience for several hours on Wednesday morning. Between 9am and noon dealers were free to walk the exhibition halls, speaking openly to exhibitors, without the ears of you end-user customers potentially overhearing what might be sensitive, or at least private, conversations.

These first hours brought it back to me, what the sheer scale of this endeavour is - and this is before the outside demo area even opened its doors at noon. I believe the show was completely sold out this year, for the first time ever. This was clear as there was no wasted space anywhere. No strategically placed tables and chairs in empty stand space; no wide areas of nothing - it was full to bursting.

And then once you've just about become used to the level on which the show is operating, they open the doors to the outside demo area - and the footprint goes stratospheric!

They have even managed to make the demo ground better than when I last visited in 2019. It's larger, has sculpted walkways now making navigating easier and they've included a utility vehicle demo track. Our guys who were visiting the show for the first time were blown away by just how good it truly is. Although the level of dust kicked up from all the cutting, driving and digging place on day two was something to behold!

And I won't mention the prototype mower that caught on fire late Wednesday afternoon, leading to an evacuation and the demo area closing early! All was dealt with though and was back up and running as normal on Thursday morning.

What was seen?

In this Weekly Briefing today, we have a few short films that hopefully convey a flavour of what was going on at the show. 

In terms of products on display there were zero-turns galore - many of which I suspect we won't ever see on our shores. STIHL for example launched a whole range of the mowers.

Whilst of course there were many examples of electrification of machinery options - or indeed automation - the impression our group came away with, was that petrol (or gasoline as they say over there), still has a very firm place in the U.S outdoor power equipment sector.

I spoke to the OPEI's President Kris Kiser about this and he told me that gasoline still has a significant role to play in the future of the industry - despite the moves in California to ban the sale of gas-powered kit.

Leaving thoughts

Upon leaving, I spoke to our contingent what their opinions were regarding the most interesting and exciting development for the industry that they saw during their time at the show?

The guys appeared to be in agreement that it was what Kress are doing with their Cybersystem, allowing a battery to fully recharge from empty to full capacity in 8 minutes. As the company's Todd Zimmerman said in his presentation, this offers professional end-users a genuine "reason for change" to move for the first time to a battery-powered machine from traditional fuel. He said in developing their range, the company wanted to compete with petrol products, not with other cordless machines.

The phrase is overused, but in this case it does seems to apply - what Kress showed in Louisville, and recently introduced to UK dealers, is a game changer.

In fact you can see below the bold, bold statement the company chose to put front and centre on their stand -

Equip truly is a special show and one that I'm sure many more UK turf professionals would find great benefit in visiting - assuming of course, that budget and time were available.