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Grasshopper Mowers In Moundridge Selected For Made In America Product Showcase

Courtesy photo

A family-owned manufacturing facility in Moundridge represented Kansas at President Trump’s “Made in America Product Showcase” at the White House on Monday.

Grasshopper Mowers makes zero-turn commercial-grade lawn equipment.

Grasshopper’s Mike Simmon says the company is a perfect fit for the showcase because every mower is designed, manufactured and assembled in Kansas, and sold throughout the world.

"I think it’s one out of every ten of our mowers is destined for an international market," Simmon says. "We’re in somewhere near 40 countries around the world—in addition to being sold across the nation."

Simmon says the company displayed one of its front-mount mowers outside the Rose Garden at the White House. President Trump, the vice president and other high-level leaders were expected to take a look the Grasshopper equipment and products from all 50 states that are made and produced in the United States.

"The mower that we had out at the White House today is one of our front-mount power units," Simmon says. "It’s an out-front cutting deck and it’s one of those that can be transformed from a mower into a snow thrower or a rotary broom or a grass catcher."

About 250 people work at the Moundridge facility, which is about 42 miles north of Wichita.

Simmon says the plant uses the latest manufacturing and tooling technology such as robotics and automated systems.

"Manufacturing has come a long way from just hand welders and the very manual processes," he says. "It’s a lot more automated, and it takes a highly-skilled and educated workforce to do the kind of manufacturing that we do.

White House groundskeepers already knew about Grasshopper because they’ve been using their mowers for at least ten years for mowing, snow removal and debris collection.

Grasshopper is a family-owned company that began in 1969, and is known as an early pioneer of the zero-turn radius mower.

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Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar

 
To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

 

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.