For many lawn care companies, qualified labor is one of the scarcest resources. Faster equipment and smarter routing are an obvious part of the response.
But speed alone can hollow out the quality a client actually notices. The more useful question isn’t whether technology should take over parts of a mowing crew’s day. It’s which parts are safe to hand off, and which still need someone standing on the grass paying attention.
The Labor Squeeze Behind the Push for Efficiency
The pressure behind this shift isn’t hypothetical. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 1.19 million people worked as landscaping and groundskeeping employees in 2024, part of a broader grounds-maintenance workforce of roughly 1.3 million. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects around 171,600 openings a year through 2034, mostly from workers leaving the field rather than new growth.
That’s a churn problem as much as a hiring problem, and it shapes which jobs get filled first.
Industry surveys point to the same strain from a different angle. In the NALP’s 2025 benchmark report, finding qualified employees was the top concern for 55% of companies, while direct labor remained their single largest cost.
When people are the scarce input, what a company does with each labor hour matters more than how many hours it has.
That shortage changes what “efficient” means, according to William Maclyn. “It’s not about doing the job faster for its own sake,” he says. “It’s about not burning somebody’s whole morning on work a machine could be handling instead.”
Technology Is Moving From the Back Office to the Lawn
For years, efficiency in this industry mostly meant better scheduling software and route planning. That’s still true, but it’s no longer the whole picture.
A separate 2025 NALP industry survey of more than 1,000 commercial landscaping professionals found that 93% already used some form of technology, typically seven to nine different tools, while 40% listed process optimization among their top goals.
What’s changed is where that technology sits. Respondents expected property intelligence, autonomous mowers, and drones to matter more within the next one to three years, alongside AI-assisted routing and scheduling. Back-office efficiency and field efficiency are starting to blend, which means the conversation about automation has moved from the office computer out onto the actual grass.
What Robotic Mowers Actually Free Up
The clearest illustration comes from crews already running robotic mowers day to day. At Virginia’s Military Aviation Museum, which maintains more than 130 acres, staff estimated that each robotic mower saved roughly 260 labor hours a year, according to NALP’s reporting on labor and landscape maintenance. One company found that once mowing stopped eating most of a site visit, its typical three-person crews became two-person crews, with the difference going toward pruning and detail work.
A more recent account describes a contractor working toward two technicians and two autonomous mowers covering 20 to 25 acres a day, with the crew handling weeding, trimming, and plant health while the machines mow. Another said robotic mowing freed up time for hand pruning and cleaning landscape lighting.
These are individual company examples rather than industry-wide numbers, but the pattern is consistent: when mowing stops consuming the visit, the saved time tends to go toward the work clients actually see.
The Judgment Calls Machines Still Can’t Make
None of that removes the need for basic turf knowledge. Mowing height alone can decide whether a lawn thrives or struggles. Cutting too short restricts root growth and leaves turf more open to insects, disease, drought, and weeds; roughly 2.5 to 3.5 inches is a reasonable target for many common lawns, and a sharp blade can make the difference between a clean cut and a torn one.
The familiar one-third rule, never removing more than a third of the blade in a single pass, still governs how often a lawn should be cut.
Irrigation makes the same point with bigger numbers attached. The EPA estimates that outdoor residential water use in the US runs to nearly 8 billion gallons a day, with as much as half wasted through overwatering and poorly managed systems. A WaterSense-labeled controller can save an average home up to 15,000 gallons a year by adjusting to weather instead of a fixed clock.
But the EPA notes that installation, zoning, sprinkler direction, and seasonal adjustment still matter for those savings to hold up.
That gap is where Murphy Eick sees the real work happening now. “A controller can decide when to turn a valve on,” he says. “It can’t tell you the soil under that zone is compacted, or that the grass is struggling for a completely different reason. Somebody still has to walk the property and figure that out.”
When Automation Actually Improves the Craft
Technology and quality aren’t always in tension. Autonomous mowers can produce a clean, consistent cut because they remove small amounts of grass frequently rather than waiting for more growth between passes. Under the right conditions, this approach can improve turf uniformity and help maintain greener cover.
That doesn’t mean the equipment can be dropped onto any property and left alone. Complex layouts, uneven ground, obstacles, blade wear, and battery maintenance still affect how well an autonomous mower performs.
Planning also comes before the mower ever starts. Crews may need to map the property, decide which areas are better handled manually, and adjust the setup as they learn how the machine moves through the site.
The mower’s job got easier. Deciding how to deploy it did not.
This keeps the point, but it no longer feels like a mini research roundup that needs three separate links.
Final Thoughts
William Maclyn and Murphy Eick both agree that as more mowing hours shift onto machines, the value of the people left on the property doesn’t shrink. It moves.
The crews that spend less time behind a mower and more time diagnosing stressed turf, adjusting irrigation, and handling the parts of a property that don’t follow a programmed route are the ones clients will notice. Companies that treat automation as a way to buy back that attention, rather than simply finish faster, are likely to be the ones still standing out five years from now.
