It must have been an unusual afternoon for John Welch. He was spending the better part of it under a canopy between his workshop and enclosed trailer. The sun in Chilliwack, British Columbia was blazing hot and the covering afforded a bit of relief. “Do you think my wife would notice if I buy a new trailer every year, one that is only two feet longer than the previous one?” he asks. “In three or four years, I could have a tremendous trailer, and she wouldn’t wonder if I have lost my mind.”

I have been thrilled to stand many places and look at buildings that have been built in part as a result of the Walker Mower. I am referring to buildings built by Walker distributors, dealers and commercial mowing contractors. It is not the building itself that excites me, but it is what the building represents. Here is a business that came “right up out of the ground”, and the Walker Mower has had a part in creating a new business opportunity.

Morgantown, West Virginia, is not the first place one would expect to see a Walker Mower. After all, the town is surrounded by mountains, and many lots are as steep as they are wide. So why does the owner of Think Greene have a Walker Mower on his trailer? “That’s easy,” says Nathan Greene. “When I was looking for an alternative to my mid-size mower, my uncle in Ohio said, ‘Buy a Walker.’ When I reminded him how hilly it was here, he told me the Walker could handle most any hill, and it will go backwards up anything.”

There are not many high school baseball fields around the country that look and play like the one in Nitro, West Virginia. Brandon Matthew Sneed Field hosts more than 100 baseball games a year and truly sets the bar high for other baseball fields in the state. Fitting enough, the field is home to one of the state’s top high school baseball teams, and it has become a showcase for the community of 35,000 residents.

When four warehouses located in Regina, Saskatchewan picked up their stakes and left for Calgary, Alberta, Dan Todd not only lost his job, he lost nearly any chance of finding a new one. He and wife Shelley had two choices: They could move to Calgary and Dan could have his old job back, or they could stay behind and Dan could try something different. They chose to stay.

Walker Mower owners pride themselves in having a machine that does more than mow a lawn; Walkers, they say, actually “manicure” a lawn. As a manufacturer, we like to hear that, yet at the same time we understand that the way an operator uses the mower can mean the difference between an averagelooking lawn and a spectacular one.