It was a very successful design. It allowed one wheel to drop off the edge of the lawn for clean trimming and made corners easier to work in.

YUP, best trimmer I have ever had and it was a freebie!

In addition some consider the staggered wheel Lawnboy design to be the most efficient at bagging, because of the location of the chute (at the front of the mower).

I had a friend borrow my Lawnboy with the rear bag setup and he remarked how much more tightly the bag was packed compared to his rear discharge Toro.

The rear bag set up left something to be desired.They bagged well but removing and re attaching was not the easiest.Great side bagger though.

It existed mostly as a feature that allowed Lawnboy to be marketed as a slightly quirky mower. The Lawnboy of old had the same offbeat appeal as SAAB cars before the brand was acquired by GM. If the staggered wheel design provided any operational benefit the more successful brands would have adopted it. But it faded into history.

It was an 'anti-scalp' feature. The staggered wheel being back nearly to the center of the deck helped prevent scalping when running the mower over a mound - in the early days of the rotary mower, grass was cut quite short because people were used to the close cut of the push and powered reels. It didn't take much of a mound or ridge to cause it to scalp at the low cutting heights.
Also it allowed the discharge port to be the closest of any mower to the point of initial grass cutting (front of deck) which resulted in discharging basically all the clippings and with a great deal of energy. With a bagging chute on, outstanding bagging was also possible.
The only drawback I know of is it makes it impossible to cut close to an object on the RH side. For this reason, they also hung the grass catcher bag on the RH side since you couldn't cut up to objects on that side anyway. The side bag has several advantages; it's bigger than the rear bag and the chute is much shorter, with a direct line into the bag. They also later furnished a rear bag set-up which also worked great.
The operator compensated for the staggered wheel by arranging his mowing so as to cut close to objects on the LH side, or with the front of the deck which because of the offset wheel can cut right up to a wall. This still didn't answer all possible situations. I've had several of them and ultimately gave up on it because of several areas in my yard that could not be handled with a staggered-wheel mower.

Excellent Post Sax My 1st new mower was a Lawnboy 2-Stroke back in the early 80's . I can attest to the anti scalping feature of the staggered wheel configuration . The Old Lawnboy finally gave up the ghost after 12 yrs or so and numerous encounters with small debris and a few small stumps lol .

If those are observable and useful benefits, I wonder why none of the major lawn mower makers picked up the staggered wheel design.

'If those are observable and useful benefits, I wonder why none of the major lawn mower makers picked up the staggered wheel design.'

They probably would have if LB had ever developed a strong share of the market. I think the offset wheel is probably a good design, but ultimately more trouble than it was worth. It seems that most people question the design and basically find it goofy, which is probably the principle reason why no other makers copied it. I'd guess at this point it's gone forever.

I'm not sure I understand the connection between Lawnboy developing a large market share and other makers like Honda, Snapper, Toro, Murray, etc., adopting a feature that is supposed to make mowers more stable.

Lawnboy failed because most people felt the relatively hassle free 4 stroke engine was better suited than a 2 stroke for home use.

The staggered wheel design was used other brands as well as Lawn-Boy. Over the years I have seen quite a few brands of staggered wheel decks. The staggered wheel deck was, as Sax said above, advertised as an anti-scalp feature. While it may indeed have a feature or two that are "real" advantages, the primary reason for making the staggered wheel deck was a sales "feature" or (for lack of a better term) a sales gimmick. You cannot deny the huge market that bought these mowers over the years. Even now some people say they are better than the conventional design. Lawn-Boy covered all the bases by making the conventional design as well as the staggered design.
roadbike, I agree with your assessment of why Lawn-Boy eventually failed. Homeowners liked easier starting 4 strokes but it wasn't always that way. 4 strokes were not very reliable or easy to start in the 60s. Some were better than others but a whole bunch were junky. Lawn-Boys even back then were easy to start. I think that easier starting Briggs and Stratton engines converted a huge market segment to 4 strokes.

Lawnboy didnt fail. It was EPAed out of existence

Good Posts and Sound Reasoning ! Never owned a 4-Cycle Lawn-boy but have had friends that swore by them. As for the Stagger , I thought I had remembered other Manufacturer's that had adapted this Style , just could not recall the Specific Make or Model . I did notice a more maneuverable tracking on my 2-Stroke Model but agree the thrust of the design was most probable a Marketing Ploy . I worked it hard and loved the strong adjustable wheel design and less flimsy cast Aluminum Deck . Silly question are lawn-boy still manufactured ? I have not seen them sold within retailers that I frequented in the past . Troy built seem to have replaced their Market area here locally .

Lawnboy is now a re badged Toro sold through the box stores. The brand didn't fail because of the design, the parent company OMC went down and was parted out.
The staggered wheel design stayed on the commercial mower with a four stroke motor until a few years ago, EPA and the public no longer accept oil burners, but LB lost it's place in that market. Because of the large fuel tank placement, the commercial version will not accept a rear bag.

Lawn-Boy didn't fail. The brand fell victim to two things: An original owner who no longer wanted to compete in the lawn and garden equipment business (and thus put the brand up for sale), and a new owner who already produced its own brand of high end lawn equipment and didn't want to bear the cost of developing two distinctly different brands of high end lawn equipment. As a result, the L-B brand became nothing more than a purveyor of 2-cycle staggered wheel mowers and 4-cycle re-badged, re-painted Toro mowers.

The Lawn-Boy brand is hanging on by a very thin thread. Lawn-Boy had it's problems in the 90s being the stepchild of Toro. Toro did make some improvements though. In the mid 90s they came out with the totally free-wheeling wheel clutch that allowed the mower to be pulled backward with no resistance. Toro also came out with the Duraforce 6hp 2 cycle engine. It was powerful but flawed with a weak 2 piece aluminum rod and a carburetor that caused surging if the moon was in the wrong phase. Walk behind Lawn-Mowers in general have fallen into that hole of everyday mundane ordinary equipment that draws about as much attention as the 200 amp breaker box on the side of the house. Gone are the days of full page magazine ads promoting a company's latest proud improvement like the staggered wheel design or the easy starting powerful little 2 cycle engine. You can thank our government for that. Getting an innovative change in design through is expensive and risky because of liability fears, and the roadblocks put up by the Consumer Products Safety Commission and the EPA. (The EPA is out of control by the way.)

Thanks CG and RDay , I remember when OMC went South and Bomdardier to over the Outboard Marine Division . Also remember as I mentioned the DuraForce Engine being offered on Limited Production LB 2-Strokes at my Local Canadian Tire Store . Thought it odd at the time since most of the LB Product Line had gone 4-Cycle. Shortly thereafter No LB stocked at C/T . Did not realize the Toro take over either . Very Informative Guys !

Good post, rdaystrom, although I respectfully disagree with you on one point. It's not the government's fault that walk behind mowers have become a commodity---it's our love of big box stores and these stores' drive for ever-lower prices that caused this to happen.

'I'm not sure I understand the connection between Lawnboy developing a large market share and other makers like Honda, Snapper, Toro, Murray, etc., adopting a feature that is supposed to make mowers more stable.'

You're kidding? If not, it's a basic tenet of business; co. A puts out a new design. Co. B, already a competitor, waits to see how it sells before coming out with something to do the same thing. However, they put their engineers to work just in case. Co. A never develops a major market share and the new design apparently has no effect on their sales. Co. B forgets about it.