Art Evans, chalk on a barn floor and a mower for commercial crews.

Dixie Chopper is an American brand of zero-turn lawn mowers from west-central Indiana. The company’s own history begins in 1980, when, it says, its founder and later chairman Art Evans was working in his barn near Greencastle, Indiana, convinced that there had to be a better way to mow. The result, in the company’s telling, was a zero-turn mower built for commercial use. English Wikipedia also gives 1980 as the founding year and Art Evans as the founder. A zero-turn mower steers by driving its two rear wheels independently, which lets it pivot on the spot; Dixie Chopper has built its whole range around that layout.

The family farm where the brand began is part of its story. In a press release dated 26 January 2023, the company called its former Coatesville, Indiana, facility “the original family farm where Dixie Chopper was born.” In the same release Wes Evans, then the company’s business unit manager, recalled the place where “we drew the frame design on the barn floor with chalk for the first production Dixie Chopper.” The company has used more than one place name over the years: a 2014 release described Dixie Chopper as Coatesville-based, while the 2023 release was datelined Fillmore, a community on the east side of Greencastle.

The company’s timeline traces how the machines changed through the 1980s and 1990s. It says that in 1987 stainless steel became a standard “Plus Feature” on all production models and that the “N” Series replaced chain drives with hydrostatic drive, followed in 1990 by a drive system it calls the Quad Loop. It names a twin-engine mower called the S’Burb’n Turb’n in 1996, a diesel model in 1999 and the liquid-cooled Millennium Mower in 2000. In 2003, by its account, came the Silver Eagle, conceived as a residential mower, and in 2007 the Xcaliber, which remains in the industrial range on its website today.

From Art Evans to Jacobsen/Textron, then to RhinoAg and Alamo Group.

Dixie Chopper remained in the founder’s hands for more than three decades. The change came in 2014. In a release dated 6 February 2014 and issued from Charlotte, North Carolina, Jacobsen, a Textron Inc. company known for turf-maintenance equipment, announced that it had acquired the assets of Dixie Chopper, which it described as a Coatesville, Indiana-based manufacturer of zero-turn mowers for the commercial and residential markets. Art Evans, quoted as Dixie Chopper’s chairman, said the company was excited to join “the Jacobsen and Textron family of brands,” and Jacobsen said it would continue to operate Dixie Chopper out of the company’s Indiana facilities, with the existing management team joining Jacobsen. Under Textron the company says it introduced a stand-on mower in 2015, the BlackHawk in 2017 and the Eagle in 2018.

Textron’s ownership ended quickly. English Wikipedia says Textron notified dealers on 5 December 2018 that it had ceased production of Dixie Chopper mowers, and that on 5 August 2019 the Alamo Group announced it had acquired the brand’s assets from Jacobsen/Textron. Alamo placed the brand with RhinoAg, its maker of agricultural implements. The company’s timeline says that in 2019 Dixie Chopper “joins the RhinoAg team and begins manufacturing mowers in Gibson City, IL,” and its newsroom carries a release dated 28 February 2020 headed “RhinoAg Welcomes Dixie Chopper.” English Wikipedia adds that a video posted on 5 December 2019 announced the first mower off the Gibson City line, described on the company’s social media that day as a pilot run.

Production then returned to Indiana. The January 2023 release said Dixie Chopper was assembling zero-turn mowers and warehousing parts in a building on the east side of Greencastle, and that it had finalised the purchase of the former Coatesville facility, with the move scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2023. Lisa Tubbs, named in the release as president of RhinoAg and Dixie Chopper, said the business had outgrown the Fillmore building. The same release states that Dixie Chopper “is owned by RhinoAg, an Alamo Group (NYSE: ALG) Company,” and the company’s website today gives Coatesville, Indiana, as its address. By the company’s account, then, its mowers are assembled in Coatesville once again.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make lawn mowers and outdoor power equipment: walk-behind and riding mowers, zero-turn machines, tillers, trimmers, chainsaws and the engines that drive them. Lawn-mower and outdoor-power brands sit at many different points in the trade, from family companies that began in a barn or a small workshop to names that now belong to much larger industrial groups, and a single brand can be sold through independent dealers, hardware chains or both.

An outdoor-power brand’s identity is usually carried less by one machine than by a name, a livery colour and the decals and dealer signs that go with it, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, been licensed to another maker or moved its factories over the decades. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its machines are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its machines are made and how its marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Speed as a brand story: a jet mower, a TV sitcom and a motorcycle.

Speed is the centre of Dixie Chopper’s identity, and the company says so in its own words. Its releases describe the brand as “the World’s Fastest Lawn Mower®,” a registered slogan that appears in its press material from the Jacobsen era through to its 2023 release. The 2023 release adds that the mowers are about more than being fast, and that the company “prides itself on providing quality and reliability in addition to speed.” Those are the company’s claims rather than independent findings, but they show how firmly the brand has tied its name to one idea.

The best-known expression of that idea is the Jet Mower. The company’s timeline says Art Evans built a jet-powered lawn mower using a Chinook helicopter engine, and that it was made famous by Tim Allen and Bob Vila in a 1993 episode of the television sitcom Home Improvement. A 2012 press release from the U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Association, issued through PRWeb, said the Jet Mower was built in 1991 by Art Evans and served as the official pace mower of the association’s national championships from 1992 to 1995; the company’s own timeline lists the machine under 1993, the year of the television appearance. Either way, the company has kept the Jet Mower at the centre of its own history.

Television returned in 2005. The company’s timeline says that to mark its 25th anniversary the crew from the television series American Chopper built the Dixie Bike, a motorcycle using a 1000cc Generac lawn-mower engine; English Wikipedia says the bike was built by Orange County Choppers and unveiled at Daytona Bike Week in 2004. The company lists the bike in its own timeline alongside the Jet Mower. More recent publicity has stayed close to motorsport: in March 2020 the company announced that it had signed on as the “Official Mower of Lucas Oil Speedway.”

The brand also sells through a particular kind of shop. Its website says that Dixie Chopper mowers are not sold in “big box” stores and that its dealers are locally owned independent businesses.

For a design guide, Dixie Chopper shows how a single idea, speed, carried a barn-built Indiana mower brand through a jet-engine stunt, a sitcom cameo, two changes of owner and a move home to the farm where it began. Compare it with Exmark, another commercial zero-turn brand that kept its name inside a larger group, and with Scag, a Midwestern maker of commercial mowers. For this guide we use navy, blue and stainless grey with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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