Owns: 4131 31HP Gas Air Cooled Tractor, MJ840 Contour Mower

Often Rents:  ET200 Turbine Blower, KP540 Power Rake

My name is Jeff Hostetler. I played in the NFL for fifteen years. I was the winning quarterback for the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV. I’ve been a contractor now for the past ten years and on the professional level, build some homes and develop some property. I currently live in Morgantown, West Virginia. I have a small horse farm. We have about forty acres and if you’ve been to West Virginia you realize there is no flat land. So we have a lot of hillsides and challenging areas to cut and mow.

I was looking for something that was going to be more manageable on hillsides, more maneuverable and safer than the current tractor that I was using. So I looked around and I actually came across a Ventrac dealership that was within a couple miles of my home. What caught my attention was they had this Ventrac out in the front parked on a hill side and I was thinking how in the world did they even get it there. So it kind of stirred my interest. I talked to the gentleman that had the dealership and he was a great salesman. He brought it out and said here, try it out. He showed me how the thing worked and operated and took me to some of the slopes that I have around the property and I was sold.

One of the biggest selling points for me was how secure I felt in the tractor being on some of these hillsides. When the salesman came out and drove it around I was able to watch him and I was nervous. Seeing him on some of the hillsides I’m thinking I will never be able to do that. But once you get in the seat it is a completely different feeling. You’re sitting low... it has such a great base that there are areas you get in and you hardly even know that you are on a hillside. Where as previously, the tractor that I had sat up very high and I was always concerned about rolling over or slipping. But this Ventrac is awesome, it is so impressive. Anybody that I see, I’m always telling them “I do all of this on a Ventrac”.

One of the great surprises for me was the versatility of the Ventrac. I had bought it basically to mow and all of a sudden I realized that there are all of these additional attachments that you can get. For me, on this forty acre piece of property and also as a contractor and a builder, I discovered they have a power rake which for yards and for landscaping, and I have a riding ring with horses, I use to keep that fluffed up and looking good and rock free. That has been an awesome piece of equipment. I also have lots of trees here on the property and in the fall where it took me weeks to get rid of all our leaves, I was able to do the same job in about five hours with the leaf blower that you’re able to put in the front. To be able to control it, the velocity, it is awesome. To save seven to ten days of work and be able to whittle that down to five hours on a Ventrac is pretty impressive.

Looking at Ventrac, I can say that is a professional machine. In my eyes being in the NFL, in that profession for fifteen years, you’re at the top of the line in that profession and to get there you had to do a lot of work - you’ve had to go through a lot of tough times- you’ve had to do a lot of research - you’ve had to do a lot of study - you have to prepare yourself - you have to be tough - you have to be durable and all of those things, I can relate to this piece of equipment. It is well made, it is VERY tough, it is sturdy and it performs. There is no doubt in my mind that that is a piece of professional equipment. This thing is well built, it’s muscle. Yet it has the finesse that you need to work around delicate items in yards and things like that, I’m totally impressed with this thing. This is a big leaguer.

One of the biggest selling points for me was how secure I felt in the tractor being on some of these hillsides.Jeff Hostetler