Filthy leaf clean up is the perfect test for the Hurricane Leaf blower

Elliot: But look at how heavy this stuff is. 

Bob: Dude, that's wreck. 

Elliot: This is wet. This is grass, dirt, leaves, sticks. It was blowing this no problem. 

Bob: Yeah, that's nuts, dude. Every now and then a company will come along that's so absolutely confident in their product, that they'll let me do a long-term test on it with no restrictions. Ventrac did it, then last year Wright mowers did it, and this spring Hurricane stepped up to the plate and did the exact same thing. They let me borrow one of their leaf blowers without asking me to do any single thing for them in return. No videos, no pictures, the only thing they wanted from me was honest feedback on how their product performed. Let's see how these things actually step up. 

Bob: The whole story starts when I went out to Muskegon, Michigan. I wanted to get a snowplow or push blade put on the back of my pickup truck and the guys that make that push blade also happen to make these Hurricane leaf blowers. While I was their factory, they offered to put one of these in the back of my pickup truck, to bring it back to my crew, to do this long-term test. What I did is I brought it back home with me, and I didn't say a word to any member of my crew, period. I just let them see that it was there and to take it out and start to experiment with it on their own. Let's see what my crew thinks of this thing. What's that? 

Elliot: Seventy-five bucks. 

Bob: How was that job? 

Elliot: Ridiculous. 

Bob: The job from hell? 

Elliot: Yeah, it was ... The backyard was this long. 

Bob: No way. 

Jake: We've got a video of it, it's pretty ...

Bob: Was it that bad? 

Elliot: Yeah. 

Jake: Yeah. It's bad. 

Elliot: The grass, it wouldn't be so bad if it was flat ground, but it's got holes and valleys and rocks.

Jake: All over. 

Bob: How did you cut it? 

Jake: We weed whipped. 

Bob: You guys weed whipped? 

Elliot: Yeah, we were able to Grandstand the front yard and weed whip the back.

Bob: All right. I got a question for you guys. 

Elliot: Uh-oh. 

Bob: Every time you guys leave now, every time, you guys take the Hurricane blower with. 

Elliot: That's true. 

Bob: I was thinking it was going to be like a spring and a fall thing, and you'd just use the backpack blowers.

Jake: It's mainly just to look more badass than all the other crews out there. 

Elliot: Really. We got to one-up them somehow. 

Bob: No really, why ... Excuse me ... Why do you guys take it every time? 

Jake: It's sweet. 

Elliot: It's efficient. I did the church and Andy's place today, and when I first started using it, my problem was the ... It was too powerful. Then I realized, well, you could idle it down and the fan doesn't blow so hard. Whoa. I didn't use a backpack at all at the church or Andy's place. I was able to idle it down, blow off the sidewalks without messing up the mulch or the rocks, blow off, and on most of the sidewalks I could just get from the street ... I'm at the church, I just stayed on the parking lot and blew it everything off and then the curbs on the actual city streets, that's where it's really nice because you can just zip right down it. I don't know. Gus, said it probably ...

Jake: It blows better than the machines do or the lawn mowers. 

Elliot: Right.

Jake: I can drive down with the lawn mower and blow it up, and it works kind of. This thing ... 

Elliot: At Augusta Shores that probably cuts a half an hour, 45 minutes off of our blowing at the end of the day. It's way more efficient. 

Bob: I thought it cut even more time. Didn't one of you guys tell me ... Who was ...

Elliot: Mike, maybe. 

Bob: One of you guys said that it cuts three hours. That was the spring cleanup, wasn't it, Jake? 

Jake: Oh yeah.

Bob: What was that? 

Jake: Yep, the spring cleanup. It was unreal for that. It cut our time of having to fight the wind non-stop. We could blow it 20 yards that way and the winds not going to blow it right back in [crosstalk 00:05:36]. 

Bob: Drew, you own one of these, right? What were you saying about it? 

Drew: The employees that it can replace is ridiculous. We live in a day and age when labor is hard to find. 

Bob: Good labor.

Drew: Yeah. Yeah. When you add in your labor rates, your taxes, all that stuff, and they got sick days, vacation days, these don't have that. 

Bob: You were saying, though, on one of your sites something about backpack blower, five hours. 

Drew: Yes.

Bob: I overheard you talking to Tim.

Drew: Yep.

Bob: What was he telling you, Tim?

Tim: I don't know. I've been off for a while. What were you telling me? 

Drew: A property cleanup around here takes about five, six guys with backpack blowers, you're looking five, six hours. To replace those guys, one guy on this machine, maybe have another guy with a backpack blower cleaning up edges, so that's two guys, we can have that same property done in about an hour and a half, two hours. 

Bob: You're telling me, and the rest of the world, in all seriousness, Drew, that you went from five guys at five hours, to two guys in an hour and a half?

Drew: Yes, sir. 

Bob: Because of that unit.

Drew: Because of this unit. Yes. I might be giving a little on the length of time.

Bob: But you don't even this unit. Drew, you don't have that unit. 

Drew: I have the X3, which is the step down from the Z3. 

Bob: Yeah, you have the smaller unit.

Drew: I have a smaller unit. With this one, you're probably 45 minutes [crosstalk 00:08:20]. 

Bob: It gets two miles an hour faster and almost 2,000 more CFM. 

Drew: Yes. Yes.

Bob: That's a big difference. 

Drew: It is. 

Bob: I mean, it really is. You said you paid for yours in a year. 

Drew: Oh yeah, easy, because it's not ... People see the machine and they think just fall cleanup. You can use it all year. You can use spring cleanups you can use it, sticks, acorns, all that, it'll blow it all out, grass clippings. We have a guy on a property that spends half hour blowing sidewalks, curb lines off of grass clippings, this thing takes about five minutes ...

Bob: Let's go look at yours. 

Drew: All right, let's go look at mine. 

Bob: Let's go look at yours because you've had one for how long now? 

Drew: Oh boy, I couldn't even tell you. Five years? 

Bob: Five years. 

Drew: More, six, seven?

Bob: Okay. Is this the original one?

Drew: No, this is not. About every two years I switch them out, try to, but yeah, this one here, came in last week, maybe two weeks ago, just getting general service. Have them go through and replace pulleys, belts, whatever else needs to be done. 

Bob: Okay. The feeling I'm getting from you is you wouldn't do without one? 

Drew: No. No. I don't miss the backpack blowers and the mixing fuel all the time, and the guys running out of fuel on the job site because they used it all in the backpack blowers. Or the tarps, I do not miss tarps at all. Those days [crosstalk 00:09:56]. What's good with these is these deflectors here, you can adjust the way the airflow is. If you have a lawn with a lot of acorns, you have this [crosstalk 00:10:14] about here, and it's shooting straight down, it's getting [crosstalk 00:10:17] acorns out of that lawn. 

Bob: You're not shooting them up into people's windows. 

Drew: Right.

Bob: You can adjust, because the ratchet was gone, what you're saying is, you can adjust these shoots to shoot up or down or almost anywhere in between?

Drew: Correct. Correct. Yep. As you were saying, if you're blowing a parking lot off or a yard, and there's cars or people, instead of throttling down, just turn your deflector down. 

Bob: Now, on your model, does your model have the front and both sides? 

Drew: Yep. Front and both sides. 

Bob: Okay. Let's look at it where we can actually see one a little better. What Drew is talking about is you can blow out the side there, you can switch it to blow out the front there, or you can blow out the other side. Also, one of the things about this design is they've actually got ducts cut on the back of the blower as well as the front to keep the engine cool. Have you ever had problems with it overheating? 

Drew: I don't, and mine's actually the older version before this one. I don't have these air shrouds and I don't have any issues.

Bob: Okay. 

Drew: You can see ... See, you can adjust ... A whole lot of leaves that you just want to hog out. 

Bob: If you have a whole lot of leaves you want to hog out, that's the [crosstalk 00:12:01]

Drew: Yeah, you lever about there, that's [crosstalk 00:12:04]

Bob: Okay. 

Drew: If you're trying to get acorns and finesse the lawn, you're going to want to turn that way.

Bob: You're doing all of that with one joystick?

Drew: Yep. This joystick. 

Bob: How about the front one? Can you do the same thing? Here's the front one. 

Drew: I don't know if you can see the front one.

Bob: Yeah, but the front one doesn't give you the ability to ...

Drew: Yeah, the front's more for sidewalks or getting corners of houses, stuff like that.

Bob: Okay, what about this side? This is side doesn't have that finesse capability either, does it? 

Drew: It does, Bob, but I think it's one solid flap. 

Bob: It is. 

Drew: Depending on the lawn, the solid flap, it's more preferred than the two different ones. 

Bob: Depending on the lawn?

Drew: Depending on if you're doing a lot of acorns or a lot of leaves. If I'm doing a lot of leaves, I'm going to want probably to use this side because you got to different flaps. You got airflow going at ... You got one going up here, and one going down here blowing on leaves. 

Bob: So you're lifting it and controlling ...

Drew: Yes, and [crosstalk 00:13:23] pushing. For that one, with the one solid flap, you'd use that more for acorns or sticks because you have direct airflow going in one direction. 

Bob: Okay. 

Drew: [crosstalk 00:13:33]

Bob: Okay. Okay. 

Drew: It's all preference and once you get on the machine, you might feel different, you might do things different, but this is me. 

Bob: All right. You got your route to finish up.

Jake: Yep. 

Bob: You don't need three lawn mowers and ...

Jake: Absolutely not. 

Elliot: There's only two on there, but yeah. 

Bob: You only need two lawn mowers and a Hurricane. Let's unload. Is this the way you typically set up your trailer on a Tuesday when you're doing light residential work? It's Grandstand, Hurricane, Grandstand? 

Elliot: If I have a helper. ... Really nice of this, is the parking brake because it's in the handles and not on separate levers. 

Bob: I like that too, actually. 

Elliot: It works amazingly. You know the hill on Augusta Shores? 

Bob: Yeah?

Elliot: It'll hold it on the pond. 

Bob: Um.

Elliot: It will. I've got it. 

Bob: I don't like the fact that he's experimented and figured that out on his own because that's a steep hill. 

Elliot: It is.

Bob: What would happen if it didn't? 

Elliot: That would suck, but the way I ... Yeah ... But yeah. The way I tested it, is I got to the bottom because I was blowing the grass off the hill, when I was at the bottom ...

Bob: The steep hill?

Elliot: Yeah. 

Bob: How the hell did you get down there? 

Elliot: Sideways. Just like you would. 

Bob: On that?

Elliot: Yeah. The first week we did it, Jake was like, "I wonder how the Hurricane will handle the hill?" I was like, "One way to find out." I was really cautious on it because I don't want to slide down it, let alone flip it or anything. It actually handled, I would say, almost as well as the Grandstand. 

Bob: All right, so here Elliot's going to demonstrate the brake. They're actually in the handles for the steering. You let go, the machine stops, grab the handles again, the machine will go, soon as you let go, it stops. It's actually pretty nice. He doesn't need to wheelie everywhere he goes, he just likes to. All right, we got to go on to the street and blow it into my yard. Here's the deal, as long as I've owned this property, I've never been able to do a very good job of getting the leaves out from this bush-line. 

Elliot: We'll solve that today, I think. 

Bob: We'll see. We'll see because it goes up, this whole head-row is just caked with leaves. 

Elliot: Do you want to know how I solved the issue of going uphill with this? 

Bob: Yeah.

Elliot: Pop a wheelie. I kid you not. I'm doing cleanup today, I always have this thing about I hate getting cars that are parked around where I'm working all dusty, so I just blow them off when I'm done. 

Bob: Yeah? Right. 

Elliot: I hadn't gotten the backpack blower all day, and I wasn't about to start, so I literally ... I just popped a wheelie and I was able to hold it basically in place for a second, [inaudible 00:17:19]

Bob: Blew ...

Elliot: Great. 

Bob: I'd kill him. Blows a rock on a car. 

Elliot: No I didn't. [inaudible 00:17:29]

Bob: Yay. All right. All right, we got to try to clean this up. Let's see how it goes. I'm going to get on the inside, you get on the outside, and we'll see if it'll blow all the way through all this stuff, and out on the other side. You going to start on this end? 

Elliot: Is that what you want? 

Bob: Yeah. 

Elliot: Yes.

Bob: All right. Okay, so Elliot, when you were blowing this from the street through the brush, look how far you got the leaves to go, because I had this whole thing mowed, mulched, you cast leaves all the way here. That's got to be 30-plus feet through the brush. That's nuts. All right, I'm going to finish this up, though. And the allergies kick in. Got to love the allergy. This is one of my favorite things about this. For a big powerful blower, it's super nimble. You can get it in and around obstacles with no problem. 

Bob: [inaudible 00:20:19]. On the lens. Look at this. This is how much stuff that I was able to blow off. This is the little tiny baby roots trying to grow underneath all the leaves, this is how much leaves were there. I've never been able to get in here. I've used handheld blowers, I've used everything, it's just like rock solid. That's the best I've ever done. That thing's awesome. Wow.

Elliot: You were on the better end of that deal. 

Bob: I saw you. I didn't try to get you. 

Elliot: Oh no, I know. 

Bob: I saw you. 

Elliot: Look at how heavy this stuff is. Dude, that's wet. This is wet. This is grass, dirt, leaves, sticks. It was blowing this no problem. 

Bob: Yeah, that's nuts, dude. 

Elliot: It's ridiculous how much power that thing has. 

Bob: Eight thousand-six hundred CFM. You know how much an average backpack blower has? 

Elliot: A hundred? 

Bob: Eight hundred.

Elliot: Eight hundred? 

Bob: Eight hundred at best. At best. 

Elliot: Is that [crosstalk 00:21:30] backpack?

Bob: That's a backpack blower, so you've got 10 times the power of a backpack blower, minimum. More like 11 to 12 times in that machine. 

Elliot: It's funny that you say that because I was thinking a cool video would be how many backpack blowers does it take to keep up with that, but we don't have enough backpack blowers. 

Bob: Let's see, we got one, two, three gas-powered ones, or do we have more than that?

Elliot: I've got a gas-powered, so we've got four gas-powered, actually I have two, so we could get five gas-powered leaf blowers.

Bob: I don't think it'd be worth it. All right, guys, I hope you like the video today. We really put this leaf blower through the wringer, and I was impressed. This thing continued to deliver above and beyond anything that I expected it to do. Let's see, the bad things that I can think about is it doesn't have a fuel gauge, and that's a stupid, silly little thing, because I'll tell you straight up, coming from the old school where I came from, you just cracked open the lid and looked in it, but I've been kind of spoiled with some of the equipment that I've been running in the last 20 or 30 years, where I can look down and know exactly where my fuel is. 

Bob: This doesn't have a fuel gauge, and if that's the only bad thing I can think to say about it, you guys decide whether it's worth the investment. I hope this video's helped you out. Let me know in the comments down below, and I'm going to give a sneak peek of a few things that I'm working with right now. I'm working with Gravely, testing out some of their equipment. I'm working with Aaron's to test out snow blowers for the upcoming season. I'm also working with Toro on a couple different products right now that have not been released yet, so you're going to see those before anybody else sees them. I can't even tell you what they are, but one of them is super cool, dude. Anyway, that's a few of the things that will hopefully be coming in down the pipeline. God bless you, guys. Go get them.