Grasshopper Mowers: Made in America for 48 years and counting

Posted on:Aug 7, 2017

Well, this is embarrassing...The first blog post since December 2016? To be sure, the 2016 blog series should have given you a good bit of info to chew on for the first half of the year, but now, it's time to back in the saddle with more from Grasshopper Mowers stories.

The month of July was a bit of a whirlwind at the factory, to be honest. Of course, we started with that All-American holiday, Independence Day, and things kind of hummed along as normal for the next week or so. But that was soon to change.

On Thursday, July 13, we got a call from Washington, D.C.; from the White House, to be exact. The caller said that President Trump was planning a grand "Made In America" Week at the White House featuring American-made products from each state in the Union, and that The Grasshopper Company had been selected to represent the State of Kansas on Monday, July 17.

Holy smokes! Is this for real? Since Grasshopper mowers have been used for mowing and snow removal at the White House since 2003, we quickly called our grounds maintenance contact there, and he confirmed that some kind of event was being planned for the South Lawn, but that was all he knew...

A few phone calls later, Trent Guyer, a third-generation family owner of Grasshopper, and Sean Mudgett, a factory representative in the northeast, were on their way to DC with a FrontMount Model 727KT-EFI Grasshopper mower to take part in the festivities.

During his speech at the event, President Trump commended the companies represented for their dedication to manufacturing products in the United States and encouraged other manufacturers and companies to follow suit and revitalize American manufcaturing and production.

Since its founding in 1958 and the launch of the Grasshopper zero-turn mower in 1969, Moridge Manufacturing has been dedicated to the community of Moundridge, the surrounding region and the State of Kansas. We hire locally, support local schools, non-profits and community organizations, and reinvest profits into factory facilities and employee training to acheive long-term growth, stability and profitability.

Every Grasshopper mower is designed, engineered, manufactured and assembled at our 350,000-sq-ft facility by a team of more than 280 highly skilled and educated employees using state-of-the-art machinery and equipment. Technological integrations such as robotic lasers, robotic press brakes, robotic welders, CNC machining centers, CNC lathes, and fully automated reverse-osmosis wash and powder-coat paint systems, combine man and machine to maximize product quality and minimize waste.

And, unlike other mower companies that use third-party and foreign components with little quality control and call the final product "Made In America" because it was all assembled somewehere in the USA, we fabricate and manufacture virtually every component that goes into a Grasshopper mower on-site using the highest-grade steel and materials. Few components are sourced from outside, for which we select American-based vendors first, and those components are continually tested and evaluated to our strictest quality standards. 

At Grasshopper, "Made In America" isn't just a slogan . . . It's a way of life. Always has been. Always will be.