Featured Video

Check out these informative videos from Rural Lifestyle Dealer.

Acres Of Lawn Mowers Mean Money for Okla. Repair Shop

Story, photos from KOTV-TV (Tulsa, Okla.)

By Rick Wells, KOTV

COLLINSVILLE, OK — Old riding lawn mowers as far as the eye can see surround JR's Small Engine Service in Collinsville.

Some are being repaired, most are just a source of salvage parts.

Jim Rainwater has been fixing small engines and accumulating riding lawnmowers for

more than 27 years. One way or another, riding lawnmowers make their way to his property.

"We get 'em all ways," he said.

Over the years the lot has become a back yard full of lawn mowers. Does he know how many?

"A thousand, 1,500 — I don't know," Rainwater said.

Some are rebuilt and for sale. Some are repaired and waiting for pick up. The majority are just here waiting for someone to need tires — or a transmission, or a starter.

Rainwater's wife says it's like the things are growing out in the field.

Every now and then he'll round up a bunch of them and sell them for salvage. It's not just rows and rows of riding mowers. He's got push mowers in a separate section, a snowmobile, even the occasional motorcycle.

"I don't do much in motorcycles," said Jim Rainwater of JR's Small Engine Service in Collinsville. "It's just one of those things that appeared, just showed up."

Lots of things just show up including tourists and visitors from out of state. The place is quite the attraction.

A high school student even used this as the site for her senior picture.

"She sat on a bunch of mowers, went back to the van, changed clothes and came back and did some more," Rainwater said.

As a source for parts, a sight for visitors and photographers, the place has quite a future..

"We got 27 acres here," Rainwater said. "We got lots of room."

Share this page: