How to Move a Lawn Mower to a New House

When you’re getting ready to move to a new house, you should definitely think about what to do with your lawn equipment, including your lawn mower.

Now, if you happen to have some experience in transporting a lawn mower to a new home, then you should remember the steps you need to follow to get the job done. In most cases, though, you won’t have had to move that large piece of garden care equipment since the day you bought it.

Regardless of the exact type of lawn equipment you have – a battery lawn mower, an electric corded lawn mower, a gas lawn mower, or a riding lawn mower, moving a lawn mower to a new house is not an easy task.

There are many important things to consider and crucial steps to take before you get to the point of loading your lawn mower onto the moving truck.

Read on to learn the best way to move a lawn mower to a new home, including a riding lawn mower.

Decide whether you really need to move your lawn mower

The very first thing you should think about is whether it’s a good idea to move your lawn mower at all.

What you don’t want to do is to go through the time-consuming process of preparing your lawn mower for transportation, then follow the steps of packing, loading, and moving your garden care equipment only to find out that all your efforts were in vain, for some reason or another, when you reach the new place.

Ultimately, you have to decide whether you will be moving your lawn mower or not based on your specific house moving parameters.

To help you decide, here are the major pros and cons of moving a lawn mower to a new house.

Advantages of moving a lawn mower

Of course, moving your lawn mower will have a number of bonuses for you:

• You’ll get to keep the same lawn mower. This is especially relevant if the unit is fairly new or it’s a model you just love and enjoy working with;
• You’ll continue to use the garden care equipment you are well familiar with;
• You’ll be able to use it right after the move is over to cut the grass of the front lawn or backyard of the house you just moved to;
• You won’t have to spend money on buying a new lawn mower after the move provided that your current one still works just fine and will continue to serve you well for the next few years;

Disadvantages of moving a lawn mower

As you can imagine, moving a lawn mower to another house will have its share of disadvantages as well:

• You may lose too much time preparing, packing, and loading the lawn equipment piece;
• You’ll have to spend money to transport the lawn mower to your final destination. This scenario is especially bad from a financial point of view in case your mower is already too old or has technical issues;
• You’ll have to find enough space for the mower on the moving truck if you’ve chosen to move by yourself by renting a moving vehicle;
• The moving company you’ll hire may refuse to transport your lawn mower for safety reasons, especially when it is a gas-powered lawn mower.

In some cases, selling your current lawn mower and buying a new one in the new town or city can be a great option when moving long distance across the country.

The thing is that you always have to take into account the price you’ll pay for transporting your piece of lawn equipment. Just think about the most practical solution in terms of money and time before you start packing up your lawn mower for transport.

Another important factor that should influence your decision one way or another is whether you’ll be able to use the lawn mower at all in the new place. When moving to another house with large green areas that will need constant care, then yes, moving your lawn mower makes a lot of sense.

However, when moving to a house with only a small backyard and an even smaller front lawn, or when moving into an apartment, then paying good money to move any garden care equipment will probably not be the best option for you.

How to Move by Yourself (DIY Moving)

Prepare your lawn mower for packing and moving

One of the trickiest parts of moving a lawn mower to a new house is that you’ll need to prepare it first for proper transportation. What that basically means is that you’ll have to find the required time in your busy house-moving schedule.

However, you shouldn’t just move the mower as it is, the way you left it after the last time you used it.

Step 1. Drain the liquids from your lawn mower

For safety reasons, you’re not allowed to transport a gas-powered lawn mower with any liquids inside it. Gasoline and oil are classified as hazardous items, meaning that professional movers will not move them, and neither should you as the risk is too great.

Drain the gas tank of your gas lawn mower into a suitable container. Gasoline is very combustible, so don’t take any unnecessary risks.

Also, empty the oil tank of your mower as well by transferring the liquid into a separate appropriate container. During transport, the oil may leak out and create a big mess inside the moving vehicle, so make sure the lawn mower has neither gas nor oil inside it before you load it up.

Give the siphoned quantities of gas and oil to a good neighbor or just dispose of them in an eco-friendly way.

Step 2. Clean up your lawn mower

If your lawn mower is dirty, it’s time to give it a good wash before packing it up and loading it up into the moving vehicle. The thing is that you don’t want to bring any dirt, dried-up mud, grass cuttings, or any other debris into the truck for two obvious reasons: 1) you’ll spend extra time cleaning the truck afterward, and 2) the dirty mower can ruin some of your belongings in the back of the vehicle.

Make sure the grass bag or grass catcher of your lawn mower is empty and clean so that it won’t make a mess inside the moving vehicle.

Wash your lawn mower according to the instructions in its user manual. In most cases, a big soft sponge and water should do the trick.

Step 3. Remove the lawn mower blades

The next step in preparing a lawn mower for transport is to remove its blades, if possible at all. To do so, follow the disassembly steps described in the user manual while wearing thick work gloves to protect your hands.

Once you disengage the blades from the lawn machine, place the original covers over the sharp blades to make them safe to handle. When done, wrap the secured set of cutting parts in a thick moving blanket, tape it up in a nice bundle, and set it aside for sage loading later on.

As was the case with the gas and oil, removing the blades from the mower should be done for safety reasons. It’s about minimizing the risk of injury during the unpredictable and dangerous Moving day.

Also, consider removing any other attachments that your lawn mower has in order to make your loading job easier and safer.

Step 4. Disengage the spark plug

The fuel tank of your gas-powered lawn mower will still have fuel fumes inside it or even some tiny amount of gas left inside.

Therefore, one way to know that the lawn mower can never get started accidentally during the haul is to remove the spark plug from your gas-powered mower. That way, it can never start by accident.

Check the user manual if you’re not sure how to disconnect the spark plug of the grass-cutting machine.

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Pack your lawn mower for safe transportation

Packing a lawn mower for moving is easy – you can finish up the packing task in several simple steps:

• Secure the blades. By now you should have put protective covers over the open blades and wrapped them up in a moving blanket. However, if you don’t have such protective covers for the blades, you should wrap a few large sheets of bubble wrap around those grass-cutting blades to prevent any types of injuries during the house move.
• Pack all accessories. Pack up all lawn mower accessories and any attachments you have removed from the machine. Use packing paper, moving blankets, and bubble wrap to protect those machine parts and transfer them into a separate cardboard box, if applicable. Label the box MOWER ACCESSORIES.
• Cover the engine. Use a few moving blankets to cover the top part of the lawn mower, and more specifically – the gas-powered or electric engine. Use packing tape to secure the protective blankets over the engine.

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Load your lawn mower into the moving vehicle

Unless you’re moving a riding lawn mower, getting the machine up into the moving truck should be fairly straightforward:

• Push your lawn mower up the loading ramp to get it safely into the back of the rented truck.
• Park the lawn mower in such a position so that its wheels are set perpendicular to the wheels of the moving vehicle. That trick should minimize any shifts in the lawn equipment during the haul.
• Fold the handle of the lawn mower, if possible, to greatly reduce the storage space it will take inside the van.
• Use straps or pieces of rope to secure the mower to the side of the truck and make sure it does not move during the relocation trip.
• Ensure there are no large furniture pieces near it that could come into contact with the expensive piece of garden care equipment – undesirable contact may lead to possible damage to the machine.
• Add more furniture blankets on top and on the side of the mower if you think it is not padded well enough. Secure those extra blankets with tape.

Load your riding lawn mower into the moving truck

If you own a ride-on lawn mower and you wish to take it with you to the new house, then you should keep in mind that the best way to move a riding lawn mower is to hire professional movers to transport it for you. It may not be the cheapest way to transport your lawn equipment but it will definitely be the safest one.

The next best way to move your riding mower is to transport it in a specialized trailer which you can hitch to the back of your own car or to the rented moving truck.

Finally, you also have the option to load your riding lawn mower onto the moving truck (or pick-up truck in some cases) and transport it to the new home yourself. If done incorrectly, the loading process can turn out to be quite dangerous and that’s exactly why this is the least recommended way to move your lawn tractor.

Nevertheless, a riding mower is usually a considerable investment so you can’t just leave yours behind.

Here’s how to load a riding lawn mower into a moving truck:

• Step 1. Get the appropriate loading ramps. To get the job done safely, you’re going to need arched ramps instead of straight ones. The reason for this is the low ground clearance of most ride-on lawn mowers. The arched ramps will help your lawn equipment clear the tailgate of the truck without any damage.
• Step 2. Secure the ramps onto the vehicle. Unfold the arched loading ramps and fix them securely onto the edge of the tailgate. After that, secure the ramps using tie-down straps so that they cannot shift. This step is very important so double-check whether everything is well secured.
• Step 3. Load the riding mower. The most important thing to remember here is that the safest way to load a riding mower into a moving truck is to ride the mower backward. The reason for this is that the center of gravity of ride-on mowers is at the back, meaning that the risk of tipping over increases greatly when riding the machine forward along ramps that go up. If you must go forward for some reason, then do it in low gear, and do not stop midway on the ramps.
• Step 4. Tie down the mower onto the truck. Once inside the vehicle, use strong straps to secure the riding mower, making sure it stays in one place during the haul. Set the mower’s parking brake as an extra measure.

Bear in mind that moving a lawn mower by yourself can be too risky, especially when it’s a riding lawn mower as opposed to a push lawn mower.

If you decide to sell your large lawn equipment prior to the move, then you’ll save yourself plenty of time and a few headaches along the way.

However, if leaving behind your bulky garden care equipment is out of the question, then the safest way to move your lawn mower is to use the services of a reputable moving company.

Get free quotes from the best movers in your area to learn the price of moving a lawn mower across the country.

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