Lawnmower doctor makes house calls

Rusty Ippolito and his mobile lawnmower service truck. Staff photo by Diccon Hyatt. If your lawnmower is broken, and you don’t feel like hauling it in to a repair shop, there’s a man in Ewing who can help. “There’s nothing I can’t fix in your yard,” said Rusty Ippolito, owner of Housecalls Mower Service. Ippolito arrives at his clients’ homes in a custom-built utility truck equipped with a hoist, a compressed air supply, a blade sharpener and an electric power hookup — everything needed to fix anything that goes wrong with small-engined lawn devices, from a fan belt to an entire engine. He also carries a supply of common spare parts, and orders anything he doesn’t have available. “I’ve never had to bring anything back to a workshop,” he said. Once, Ippolito had an ordinary lawnmower repair shop in Ewing called Apex Mower, which his father had started in the late ’60s. One day a man called him in need of a lawnmower belt. It seemed simpler to Ippolito just to go out to his house and fix it on site rather than bring it back to the shop for such an easy job. “I went and put the belt on, for a discounted price. He loved it. I loved it,” he said. A business idea was born. In 2006, Apex Mower became House Calls Mower Service. Ippolito is the owner and only repairman, traveling as far as South Brunswick and Yardley to repair mowers. He has been fixing small engines since 1972 when, as a 14-year-old, he started working at his father’s business. His wife, Patty, accompanies him sometimes, and “picks up a wrench once in a while,” he said. There is no storefront and there are no store hours. In the busy season, he works from 7 or 8 a.m. until dusk. No one has to lift a mower into a car trunk, and customers’ mowers don’t disappear for weeks at a time. Ippolito said he charges the same or less than traditional repair shops. And even though he is a mobile repairman, he can still make warranty repairs for Briggs and Stratton, Tecumseh and Honda engines and MTD, Murray and American Yard Products Mowers. Beyond lawnmowers, Ippolito fixes other small engine equipment and is a warranty service center for Generac and Coleman generators and Husky and Campbell and Hausfeld air compressors. To make a repair appointment, call Ippolito on his cell phone at (609) 558-7751 or call or fax (800) 539-0877.