When Van Wall Equipment is presented with a challenge, they find solutions. Iowa State University’s groundskeeping crew was in need of a precision sprayer for golf and turf equipment with mapping and turned Van Wall for help. The John Deere dealership’s Integrated Solutions team created a specialized golf and turf sprayer primarily from ag components that they adapted. The project was so successful that they now have a contract to build the units for John Deere and will be the exclusive supplier of the product for the next 3 years to John Deere Golf & Turf distributors.

“We got this idea that if we could do precision spraying with a 120 foot boom at 14 mph, we sure ought to be able to do precision spraying on a golf course with a 20 foot boom at 7 mph. Since all the technology was there through the John Deere AMS product pipeline, we were able to convert that product to work on a John Deere Pro Gator and make it available to anybody who wants to do precision spraying,” Don Van Houweling, owner of Van Wall Equipment, explains. 

Scott Meldrum, Integrated Solutions manager, and Brian Titus, a precision specialist, worked on designing the system over the last 2-3 years, made sure it would work for the Pro Gator with auto-steer and other features. “Now we’ve had the machines out in enough venues and have sold enough of them to know they work and are tested,” Van Houweling says.

Van Wall Equipment earned top honors as Farm Equipment's 2016 Dealership of the Year. Van Wall is a John Deere dealership based in Perry, Iowa, with 16 ag locations.

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The product was introduced to the market on June 15, 2016, during the John Deere Golf & Turf distributor meeting in Orlando, Fla., and if the reaction is anything like Iowa State University’s, it will be a successful venture. “Mike [Van Houweling] and I were just on the Iowa State campus. And Tim Van Loo, the sports turf manager said, ‘You can take everything out of my shed, but you can’t have my precision sprayer.’ Because they create a map just like a farmer would for a field. He knows where every sidewalk is. He knows where every ball field is. He just turns it on and it automatically steers itself and it sprays where it’s supposed to,” Van Houweling says.