Merging with a lawn company of sorts? Can this work?

[Mooseontheloose]

Hi All,

I wanted to bounce this idea off some of you brilliant minds and see if you could help me out with a hypothetical idea I had....

Let's say you had a family member or friend who owned an established premier lawn care company in your area. How could it make sense from a business standpoint for him to basically add a tree care division and you run the show ? So you could bring in all the tree work related equipment/tools/workers and manage the operations. Basically its a startup tree company but you are using the lawn company to expedite the process by having access to all of those potential properties/clients. Is there other ways you guys can think of to make this work ? Could it be that this idea is overcomplicated and I should just ask him for referrals and maybe pay him for them ?

I will leave it at that for now and see what kind of responses I get

 

[Reach]

I can see it as a possibility, with a couple caveats.
1. The lawn service needs to be a full service lawn care and landscaping company, or the customers likely already have other services they use.
2. The lawn service needs to be large enough to support the expenses of starting and running a tree for at least a year or three until the tree service becomes profitable.
3. The tree service needs to be run using separate equipment and field staff, or it will just get in the way of the lawn service.

There’s a couple larger local landscapers in the area that have tree divisions, and that is how they all work. I did it years ago with one of my landscape companies, and tried to use some of the landscape crew and trucks, and that did not work at all. I gave up on the idea after a while, and actually got out of landscaping completely to run only the tree service.

My thought would be that if you’re joining up with someone, you should have a limited partnership agreement drawn up so that there is no question of ownership. You could write the agreement so that your equity is based only on the value of the tree care division, otherwise the owner of this company may feel that you’re just trying to take a share of their business for nothing.

Any of that make sense?

 

[southsoundtree]

Many trees and turf are enemies.

I advise for as much turf replacement with mulch in root zones as possible. Opposite to a lawn company, at least to a degree.

A challenging balance.





A lot has to do with your market scope of services, equipment needed, too.



An interesting opportunity.

Several of these 2 division set-ups, locally.

 

[Rusticus]

I worked for a large tree company that was bought up by a huge landscape maintenance company. It was super difficult but paid off in a lot of ways.

The landscape guys want to measure the work and plug it in to their matrix to spit out a price and have a difficult time understanding why each work order needed a site visit. They also worked at a much smaller profit margin and saw the tree sides margins and thought they could apply the landscape thought process to make even more money.

The tree guys thought the landscape maintenance was hurting their trees with over mulching and weed eater rash.

We did get a lot more business we wouldn't have had without the other leg of the company. I think drawing hard lines between the two could work well if respected.

 

[Mooseontheloose]

I can see it as a possibility, with a couple caveats.
1. The lawn service needs to be a full service lawn care and landscaping company, or the customers likely already have other services they use.
2. The lawn service needs to be large enough to support the expenses of starting and running a tree for at least a year or three until the tree service becomes profitable.
3. The tree service needs to be run using separate equipment and field staff, or it will just get in the way of the lawn service.

There’s a couple larger local landscapers in the area that have tree divisions, and that is how they all work. I did it years ago with one of my landscape companies, and tried to use some of the landscape crew and trucks, and that did not work at all. I gave up on the idea after a while, and actually got out of landscaping completely to run only the tree service.

My thought would be that if you’re joining up with someone, you should have a limited partnership agreement drawn up so that there is no question of ownership. You could write the agreement so that your equity is based only on the value of the tree care division, otherwise the owner of this company may feel that you’re just trying to take a share of their business for nothing.

Any of that make sense?

This all makes sense and you have some great points.

The first tree company I worked for was a powerhouse of a large tree company in my area with a small lawn division. That is where I learned to do Lawn, Tree, and landscape work. Now that I am looking to go out on my own, I was thinking I could somehow collaborate with this close friend of mine to expedite the process. But perhaps I should just go back to the traditional way of slowly growing this up from nothing but a pickup and a dump trailer. Thoughts????

Some more info: I have the means to purchase my own truck + chipper. I am just not going to do that without the workload in front of me. As of now I still work for someone else full time. However, if I can find a way to have work flying in the door all of a sudden because teaming up with the lawn care friend worked than I will absolutely purchase the equipment.

If I sound all over the place, its because I am and I need your expert advice. On one hand I can talk myself out of the idea easily, on the other I cant see a better way other than purchasing another tree company to quickly have my own operation going.

 

[JCB]

This all makes sense and you have some great points.

The first tree company I worked for was a powerhouse of a large tree company in my area with a small lawn division. That is where I learned to do Lawn, Tree, and landscape work. Now that I am looking to go out on my own, I was thinking I could somehow collaborate with this close friend of mine to expedite the process. But perhaps I should just go back to the traditional way of slowly growing this up from nothing but a pickup and a dump trailer. Thoughts????

Some more info: I have the means to purchase my own truck + chipper. I am just not going to do that without the workload in front of me. As of now I still work for someone else full time. However, if I can find a way to have work flying in the door all of a sudden because teaming up with the lawn care friend worked than I will absolutely purchase the equipment.

If I sound all over the place, its because I am and I need your expert advice. On one hand I can talk myself out of the idea easily, on the other I cant see a better way other than purchasing another tree company to quickly have my own operation going.

Hi,

I'm not an arborist but have run businesses. I think the concept has great potential and sounds like it could give both businesses a morale boost as well as many, ongoing referrals. And you get the psychological push that you need to leave your current job, buy equipment as needed, and invest yourself and your business--all while having a limited safety net.

I would say, though, that your friend needs to have an impeccable reputation for this to work at all (as do you).

John

 

[Reach]

This all makes sense and you have some great points.

The first tree company I worked for was a powerhouse of a large tree company in my area with a small lawn division. That is where I learned to do Lawn, Tree, and landscape work. Now that I am looking to go out on my own, I was thinking I could somehow collaborate with this close friend of mine to expedite the process. But perhaps I should just go back to the traditional way of slowly growing this up from nothing but a pickup and a dump trailer. Thoughts????

Some more info: I have the means to purchase my own truck + chipper. I am just not going to do that without the workload in front of me. As of now I still work for someone else full time. However, if I can find a way to have work flying in the door all of a sudden because teaming up with the lawn care friend worked than I will absolutely purchase the equipment.

If I sound all over the place, its because I am and I need your expert advice. On one hand I can talk myself out of the idea easily, on the other I cant see a better way other than purchasing another tree company to quickly have my own operation going.

My thinking is that you have a good idea if your friend is close enough to be willing to front enough cash to make this happen. To make such a jump all at once will be expensive, the cost of equipment to do it right will be $100k+ to buy decent used equipment. Marketing will be another $5-10k at least.

If you decide to go out on your own, buy the truck and chipper right off, and buy decent equipment that is bigger than you need right now. You’ll never regret buying slightly bigger/nicer/newer than you need, but you’ll quickly grow out of your equipment if you buy only exactly what you need to start. Maybe buy the truck and chipper now and start working Saturdays for a while, at least the winter - now is not the best time to go out on your own full time.

Before you do anything else though, go find a good, solid business coach and start meeting with him. It will be well worth the money, you’ll never regret spending the money for the knowledge and potential earnings that will come from a good coach.

 

[flushcut]

The lawn jocky's would have to write me a pretty big check to team up. Basically buy me out and I would work for them for a period of time. Plus ain't no way in hell would I go back to a partnership. So my vote is NO.

 

[ghostice]

Before I jumped in and spent big capex money it might be an idea to sit down and analyze cash flow projections possible from the lawn company's clients. Lawn company's here are kinda repeat work throughout the season and are therefore a bit more limited in terms of new customer base - they get so big and so busy and don't need to go out seeking new customers constantly. Treework is a bit different - the need for repeat work, per customer, is not at the same frequency interval as lawn care/ landscaping. So from a strictly business basis they seem to me to be different animals. If the lawn care company has larger clients like say municipal parks or golf courses, etc. the work scope may be more substantial. If you can do your own work on the side as well, it might be a more sustainable arrangement. Depends how you structure your relationship.

As an aside, at least around here, anything tree folk can do to get landscapers from layering four layers of landscape fabric and then piling stones 6 inches deep on top of the tree's roots (and then wondering why, oh why, the trees struggle in middle age) would be a big win in my book. Carry the torch . . .