Manual lawn mowers are making a comeback

updated 12:05 p.m. ET May 27, 2007

CHICAGO - Powerful, loud mowers have been showing lawns who’s boss for decades. But now contraptions that couldn’t cut butter without a good shove are quietly — really quietly — making a comeback.

Manual lawn mowers, long the 98-pound weaklings of the tool shed, are pushing their way, or, more accurately, being pushed around more yards all over the country.

“It’s phenomenal,” said Teri McClain, inside sales administrator at the 112-year-old American Lawn Mower Co. in Shelbyville, Ind., which she said is the only manufacturer of reel mowers in the United States. “Sales continue to rise every year.”

Phenomenal might be a little strong. Exact statistics aren’t available, but McClain estimates 350,000 manual mowers are sold in the United States each year — most made by her company. That is just a fraction of the 6 million gas-powered walk-behind mowers that hit the market last year.

Still, that number is about 100,000 more than were sold just five years ago and seven times as many as the estimated 50,000 a year sold in the 1980s, McClain said.

American Lawn Mower was one of about 60 domestic manufacturers of manual mowers at the end of World War II, when power mowers began taking over the industry, McClain said. Now, it is the only one making the mowers in the U.S., although some U.S.-based companies make the mowers in other countries.

According to buyers and sellers, the resurgence of these quaint reminders of yesteryear is due most notably to growing environmental concerns and an increasing number of women who do the mowing.

Headlines about global warming, pollution and vanishing natural resources have people — and not just those wearing Birkenstocks — making changes.

“I’m not a tree hugger but I think we all think about being more environmentally friendly and leave less of a footprint on the world,” said Ben Kogan, a Chicago architect who started using his new mower this spring.

“It’s an introduction into green gardening and a more green lifestyle,” said Jim Grisius, 45, of Homewood, Ill.

And the mowers provide one way to respond to pollution from gas-powered mowers, not to mention the warnings from at least one former vice president.

“I definitely see a bigger selection of people all the time, especially since the Al Gore movie (’An Inconvenient Truth’),” said Lars Hundley, the owner of Clean Air Gardening, a Dallas-based gardening equipment retailer.

The mower also is appealing because it is inexpensive — around $200 — and so simple.

It looks different than the one invented in England in the 1830s to take over a job that once belonged to scythe-wielding people or hungry sheep. And with the use of lighter metals and plastic, it’s a lot lighter than the heavy iron and wood mowers some baby boomers remember pushing around for a measly 50 cents an hour.

But it works pretty much the same way it always did: Just push it and it cuts.

“I don’t have to worry about gas, repairs and getting it (the mower) started,” said Eric Skalinder, a 35-year-old Chicago teacher.

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