Mowing lawns is golden for this Cape Cod contractor

If someone tells you there’s gold in Cape Cod, one of the first things you may think of is a beautiful New England home with a colorful garden. Or maybe you will picture the surf cresting over a sandy beach. For other people, Cape Cod gold can be found in all the fresh fish and chowder they can eat.

When Carl Johnson mentions the word gold, however, he is talking about something entirely different. He is referring to a machine that allows each of his two crews to mow between 25 and 30 lawns a day. He’s referring to a machine that allows him to compete in a very competitive market, and that has helped him grow from a one-person operation 13 years ago into one of the best known landscape contractors in the Falmouth area.

The owner of Johnson & Sons in Waquoit, Massachusetts, has been a loyal Walker user since he purchased his first Walker Mower in 1994. Today, his two 16-foot trailers carry four 20-hp GHS Walkers, two equipped with 48-inch decks and two with 42-inch decks.

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“If I can get the Walker on a property, I use it,” says Carl, a former Sears small-engine technician. “In fact, it’s to the point now that if I can’t use the Walker on a property I won’t even bid the job. I refuse to use a walk mower anymore, and I won’t let my employees use one either. We stopped using a horse and cart at the turn of the last century, and I’m not about to go back.”

The irony is, this entrepreneur is not about to go back one day, let alone an entire century. He spends his days building and improving on his customer base, consolidating routes, and finding efficiencies that will add to his productivity and bottom line. His company maintains somewhere between 175 and 200 properties, with crews spending approximately half of their time mowing and the other half pruning trees, mulching beds, installing flower beds, and overall making vacation homes look their very best for property owners.

walker-talk-volume-20-4_1.jpgCautious Start

Carl, a Cape Cod native, had worked for Sears for 25 years when a disagreement with his supervisor caused him to think about going into business for himself. After discussing his work environment with his wife, Karen, Carl mapped out an exit strategy.

He would repair small engines and mow lawns on the side. After a few years, maybe one or the other would seem promising enough that he could leave his “day job.” Mowing started out rather slowly. The first year, he had eight customers. The second year he had 18. By the third year, however, he had grown his mowing business to 35 customers, and a year later he added 30 more.

“Now, I was working 18 hours a day mowing lawns, repairing small engines and working full-time at my other job,” Carl remembers. “Luckily, my former employer helped move my career along by laying off all of its technicians, including me. Then, I had to decide which way to take my new career. Would it be mowing lawns or repairing small engines?” He chose mowing lawns because it held the most opportunity for him, not to mention his four sons.

Pot Of Gold

Four years before striking out on his own, Carl and Karen were in Toronto visiting Karen’s parents. Says Carl, “I was driving along when I saw a man operating a mower back and forth without even stopping. I drove a mile farther down the road and stopped, all the time thinking to myself that I had never seen a mower do that before. So, I turned around and drove back to talk with the operator. He told me he was using a Walker, and that because of it he could operate with one less employee and make more money. Furthermore, when he came home at night he said he was not fatigued.

“When he opened it up for me and I saw how easy it would be to service, I knew it would be a gold mine for me.”

It took Carl four years to buy his first Walker from Dan Staples, the owner of Bayside Equipment located in East Dennis, Massachusetts, but only a week to determine he had made the right decision. During that first week of operation, he was mowing in tall grass and, in his words, “The mower just chewed right though it.” But then the customer failed to warn him about a cast-iron pipe in the middle of his property.

Carl continues the story. “I was mowing along and suddenly heard this loud bang. The mower jumped and the dirt flew. I knew immediately what had happened. I said to myself, ‘I’ve had this mower only a week and now I’ve destroyed it.’” He backed the machine off the pipe and after checking it over, discovered that he was still in business. “I looked at the machine and thought, ‘This mower is indestructible,’” Carl recalls. Of course, he adds, a pipe like that would normally raise havoc with any machine. He was fortunate to escape without any damage.

Over the years, however, Carl says he has found other ways to use and sometimes abuse his mowers. But he purchased them for their mowing ability, and it is mowing where they truly shine.

“For mowing the types of properties we mow, with lots of landscaping and obstacles, and having customers who want their grass clippings picked up, I don’t believe anyone could design a better product,” Carl adds. “We have the 42-inch decks so we can access properties with gates, and use the larger decks on wider areas. Because the grass-handling system is designed as part of the machine, it is not cumbersome at all and allows us to mow places where other operators can’t get. Yet, it’s the handling that still impresses me the most. To me, mowing with a Walker is like skating while sitting down.”

walker-talk-volume-20-5_3.jpgCarl’s properties average around 5,000 square feet of lawn. He operates two three-person crews, with two members of each crew operating a Walker and one doing the trimming and blowing. He uses this same configuration on small and large properties alike. The smaller the property the shorter the stay, Carl notes. “After all, these are vacation homes, and property owners would rather have us make a lot of noise and stay a few minutes rather than making less noise, but staying around for a longer period of time.”

This owner/operator has gained other insight from working on the Cape for so many years. For example, when it comes to bidding on properties, he has learned that the timeliness of getting information to customers is just as important, if not more important, than the bid price. Hence, the first contractor to show up with a price for customers will more than likely get the job. Carl says he wins nearly 80% of the properties he bids.

In addition, he has learned to spread out his risks by not allowing any one account to be more than 10% of his business. As he explains, “Customers come and go on the Cape. Contractors can easily replace smaller customers. But bigger ones, ones for which you may actually have to buy new equipment or retain new employees in order to provide service, are more difficult to find and replace.”

walker-talk-volume-20-5_2.jpgNumbers Game

Carl has no regrets about going into business for himself. All four sons have participated in the operation. Two of them, Adam and Brandon, are still with him today. Since launching his new career, Carl says the Cape has gone through several changes, not the least of which are rising property values and an increase in the number of people who want to provide service to property owners.

The changes have required Carl to increase the number of properties he mows, and to become more efficient in the process. Outlying properties lost by attrition are replaced by closer-in customers and, as he mentioned before, if a Walker can’t be used on the property he turns it down. He estimates that each mower makes him somewhere in the vicinity of $35 to $40 per hour, a figure that goes up substantially when properties are both small and in close proximity.

Is more growth imminent? “Not really,” says Carl. “We have eight employees plus my wife and me. I’m at my management capacity. I know that, and I don’t want to ruin a good thing. We will look to increase revenue by becoming more efficient, not by retaining more employees. That’s where the Walkers will continue to play an important role.

“I go to the lawn and garden show in Boston every year and always keep my eye out for something, for some mower that may be more efficient than my Walkers. I haven’t seen anything that comes close, yet. That doesn’t surprise me, however. I wouldn’t be in business without these machines.”

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