We did not go electric because it was trendy. We went electric because we believed it would give us a competitive edge, and we like disrupting. California is making some major changes, and instead of waiting to see what would happen, we decided we were going to get ahead of it instead of scrambling to catch up. That is "The K&D Way": when change is coming, we lead it.
What I did not expect was how much the transition would change us operationally, culturally, and competitively. Going 100% electric has become one of the best decisions we have made as a company. Here is the real story of how it happened.
In 2024, California banned the sale of new gas-powered landscaping equipment. A lot of companies were watching that deadline like it was a slow-moving train. We decided to step off the tracks early.
When Jon Wendt joined K&D in 2022, one of his first assignments was to figure out our path forward. We tested close to a dozen different brands. Most of them failed on at least one of three things: cut quality, durability for commercial use, or battery runtime. We ended up going with Stihl for about 25% of our crews. Thought we had it figured out. Then we ran into reliability issues just outside the 12-month warranty window. Back to the drawing board.
In 2024, we discovered Kress at a dealer show. Three-year warranty on tools. Five-year warranty on batteries. Full commercial lineup that actually delivered consistent power without fading at the end of a charge. No peaks and valleys. Just steady output from start to finish. We decided to go all in with a full conversion. Every gas-powered tool, every other battery brand… gone. Replaced with Kress across the entire fleet.
That was not a small project. We received hundreds of new tools and batteries. Wendt and the team cataloged and asset tagged every single piece. At our Watsonville headquarters, each trailer got its own 20-amp circuit for overnight charging. For remote sites, we brought in TOWA Power Distribution Manager controllers that can charge up to 30 batteries on a single 20-amp circuit. The infrastructure investment was real, but so was the return.
Here is the part I want to make sure gets said clearly: the guys doing the work every day are the ones who validated this decision. When we first rolled out electric equipment, the reaction was predictable. Change is hard, and crews have long memories of underpowered battery tools that let them down on the job. Manny Martinez, one of our supervisors, told me the guys flat out refused to touch the first electric push mowers we brought in. Then one or two of them tried it, and it became theirs. As in, “do not touch my mower.” They were literally fighting over the demo units. That is the shift you want to see.
Once the crews got their hands on Kress and actually ran it through a full day of commercial work, the skepticism disappeared. The runtime is more than enough to get the job done. No gas mixing. No fumes. No blowing an engine because somebody grabbed the wrong can. Martinez prefers the electric tools over gas across the board now. Not reluctantly, genuinely. And there is a quality of life component here that does not get talked about enough. These are people running equipment for eight hours a day. The noise alone from gas tools does real damage over time. With Kress, that is gone. No smell on the clothes. No hearing risk. Lighter to handle. The job gets done and the guys go home feeling better than they used to.
Before going all electric, getting crews out in the morning was a whole production. Equipment had to come back into the shop every night for security. That meant 40 guys unloading trailers, making multiple trips, storing tools, then reversing the whole process at dawn. On top of that: fueling, gas mixing, and the constant shuffle of equipment between crews. Now? We unplug the trailer and go.
Everything stays locked in the enclosed trailer overnight. Charged and ready. No morning chaos. No missing tools. No one showing up to find that crew C borrowed crew A's trimmer and forgot to put it back. Each truck and trailer has its own dedicated set of tools. The guys take care of their equipment because it is their own. We have seen fewer dull blades, less damage, and more accountability across the board.
That kind of operational tightness compounds over time. It is hard to put a precise dollar figure on it, but Andy Hawley, our Maintenance Leader, who had tried to build a similar electric system at a previous company and got shut down over infrastructure costs, put it best: “ROI is 24 months max when you factor in fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and eliminated engine replacements.” And that was a conservative estimate.
Here is the part that surprised me most. When we launched Branch 805 in San Luis Obispo, we went in fully electric from day one. The feedback from clients was immediate. Residents at Monarch Dunes were sending emails praising the crew. Not because they knew the equipment was electric, but simply because it was quiet. No disruption, no noise bleeding into a work-from-home call, no fumes in the neighborhood.
We had one HOA client call us confused after the first few weeks because they could not tell if the crew had been on site. They were so used to hearing gas equipment that the silence felt like an absence. Once we explained the situation, that became a selling point instead of a complaint.
And then something interesting happened. Clients started writing it into their RFPs: "All electric required." Meaning even when they go out to bid, even when price matters, the competition has to be electric to even be considered. Most of our competitors are still in the exploration phase, but the market is starting to require what we already built, 100% electric. That is not just a competitive advantage. That is a moat.
We are not stopping there. The next chapter is autonomous mowing with the Kress Voyager. We have already deployed it at multiple sites and are getting a large delivery soon. The early results regarding crew productivity and margin in new markets are real and compelling, but that is a story for another time. The point is this: we didn’t wait for the industry to figure out electric. We tested, we failed, we adjusted, and we committed. The crews, the clients, and the numbers are all telling the same story now.
Going electric was the right call. The companies that move now will set the terms. The ones that keep waiting will be reading the RFPs they cannot bid on. Raise the bar, or get comfortable being average. If you are interested in learning more about our electric setup, check out jwhitegroup.com/kress.