Brian’s Lawn Maintenance SHOP TOUR of Caleb Auman Landscaping | My Reaction

Mike Andes. And you're listening to the landscape business course. Today we are doing a reaction video to Brian's Lawn Maintenance, who recently went to Caleb Almond's tour of his shop. And what's really cool about this shop tour is it's a landscaping company. So we've talked about lawn care companies before Maintenance. Caleb at Almond Landscaping does primarily landscaping and hardscaping even more specifically. So really an interesting take and I think some different insights due to the fact that some of the advice I give a lot of times is generally around maintenance, whether it be about equipment and things like that. So when we talk about hardscaping and we talk about design and build some different elements, I think we're gonna be able to bring in today. So let's go ahead and jump into this. Thank you everyone that has been supporting the show using the links below. I edited the description down there, so check it out. New course links, lawn care, web design, et cetera. So check those out. Really appreciate your support there. Let's go ahead and jump into the video.

Here we go.

Can we film in here?

Yeah, I don't care. Yeah, it's totally fine. It's a train wreck. We're running a. Wow. Yeah, we're running a company with four guys and, you know, nearly pushing a million dollar company out of like a tiny space. So we really. And this is to. This is to the point where it's inefficient. Right. So this is not like actually cool that we're saving a lot of money on rent. Yeah, we actually pay a lot of money to have guys sift through crap. So this isn't exactly really. We're paying guys to dig through things to find things. And if you're having to look for things, you're wasting money. So keep that in mind.

This is a really, really good point that Caleb brings up here. And I think sometimes we forget just how expensive our labor is. If it costs money in terms of labor, almost always it's worth it to spend extra dollars to fix that issue. Because literally 10 hours a day of wasted time, if you're paying someone on average $15 an hour with taxes and everything, 20 bucks an hour, that's $200. And if you're trying to save, you know, a couple hundred bucks a month over Internet, for example, like, literally, if you have a couple office people and your Internet is slow, the amount of time that it wastes is enormous. Same thing with things like shop organization. It's worth getting the piece of equipment or the better truck or improving the Shop. If you're going to spend $500,000 a month on rent. If you can save an hour, two hours every day out of all of your employees and you start multiplying that as you begin to scale and have efficiencies, it makes even a bigger and bigger difference. So that's a very good point.

Really cool. Well, I operate out of a 10 by 10 storage. So mine's about exactly from here to here and maybe to the blue thing. So what is this, a 20 by 30?

This is 1540. This is 1540. Okay. So then we got a bunch of outdoor storage. Of course. You know, as you saw there. Wow.

Makeshift shop tour. I literally just jumped out of the truck. I'm like, we're filming.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So we try to. You know, this is one of those things, like it's organized chaos. We know where everything is, but it doesn't make it okay.

Sure.

All this stuff goes out on kind of a daily and weekly basis. These boxes go on our stormwater jobs. They've got everything in them that they need to do. Stormwater stuff.

Yeah.

A little reversible compactor that kind of floats around different projects as needed. Absolutely.

I think I saw those at Teco block. Yeah.

We actually bought it from there or the event. Running a great special. Yeah, yeah. Freaking great deal. And that thing is awesome, by the way.

All right.

Diesel fuel cell that kind of goes in and out of trucks. This stuff right here, Brian. Like, I haven't used it. My guys say it is as good as everybody says it is.

Okay.

It says pre bailed straw. Yeah. And it's got a polymer tackifier in it. So you put it down, you spread it down just like mulch. Okay. And then you water it and it locks in with that polymer. My guys say this stuff's like 12 bucks a bail. It's expensive, but they say it is freaking awesome. Like a whole pallet was like 500 bucks.

I'm like, oh, no way.

The guys say it is freaking sweet because it spreads out real, real accurate. I love that stuff.

So just got a little makeshift video here today.

Sure, man. Yeah. I'm Caleb Almond. I'm the operations manager for our company, which sounds way fancier than it is. My wife Brittany owns the company. We started it pushing almost 10 years ago now, which is crazy from a company I crashed prior. So I've been in contracting essentially now my whole adult working career and sub adult career. Started out mowing grass just like everybody. I've always wanted to get into construction. Landscape construction, green I say green construction, like environmental type construction.

Okay.

And this has been like my kid contractor dreams in my life. So seeing this, and like I said, this is not a fancy shop, but we're really trying to do low overhead. So we're trying to put enough money away or as much money away as we can. Not paying rent to put it into something that's going to pay us back down the road. Right. Put it into hard real estate at some point. So we're trying not to spend a bunch of money on rent.

Yeah.

So we can put it into a mortgage on a property at some point. For our shop. We have a house, but we shop facility.

And over here, what do we got for.

So I really like this idea. This is a great for a medium sized landscaping businesses to have your house on some property with a shop that's connected to it or like a little bit aways from it and running the business out of there. I like the separation. Not running out like your garage, but actually having a separate building or like a shop separate even entrance to that facility for your employees to come into. Really, really like this idea. Because from an economic standpoint, you're already getting a mortgage in your house. You're already getting that all. You know you have to pay for that any. And so usually you can save in comparison to rent when you actually have the shop on your property. Really like this idea for medium sized landscaping and long hair businesses.

Vehicles. It's a little bright out there, but you got a couple trucks. You want to go look at the trucks real quick?

Yeah, sure, man.

Hell yeah.

All right, so let's look at the trucks, the equipment.

Sure, man.

Can we do that real quick?

Yeah, we got stuff sitting on site. One of my F550 dump truck went down Friday with a starter issue. Okay. So it's sitting at a repair shop.

Hashtag real life.

We've got old Rusty Trusty here. This thing's on its way out.

Okay.

We bought this truck a few years ago, but it's. It's been can opener with trailers. It's been. It's had a hard life. It's about to move on to the scrapyard in the sky.

I love it.

But each truck, everything we have is outfitted with at least the bare minimum basics of like jumper cables, first aid kits, tournament kits, fire, fire extinguishers, all that kind of stuff.

Okay.

So every truck is outfitted with that stuff. We want the guys to be able to change tires or do whatever the heck they need to do on a job site at the most minimal or basic function.

The key to doing that when you get more and more trucks and more and more employees is staying organized. Because tools inside of trucks seem to just like just scatter. And so whether it be if you have tire jacks or you have, you know, loose pieces for irrigation, keeping it really organized is the most important thing because otherwise your truck's beginning to look like a disaster inside. So I love the concept. Just make sure it's organized chaos with all the tools and the replacement parts, tire jacks, hazard lights, all the rest of it that you might have in inside the truck.

And then on top of that, other basic tools. Right? Yeah, sure track trailers. We got a sure track dealer local. So everything is sure track. Heck yeah. You know, they've been good trip. This trailer is not a replacement but a duplicate of that one. And it's beefier. They've made some improvements on it which I freaking love this trailer actually because they made some really nice improvements to the head wall there.

Gotcha.

And some tie down points and all this other stuff.

This is the new one, the new trailer.

This is the great big Internet.

So this is what's called a tilt trailer. And we love these for putting on heavy equipment. And so you saw the excavator there was sitting on top of one of these tilt trailers. They're the best for loading equipment. Like putting a skid loader or track loader or an excavator on is so much better than a dump trailer. Now a dump trailer will do it. It's a little bit sketchy, but it will work. And so it's. I wouldn't get one of these tilt trailers unless you're using an excavator like on a daily basis. But if you are and you're constantly using equipment in like the hardscaping world, these are a must because they're just so much safe. They're just a lot more safe and reliable when it comes to loading the equipment on and off. It's just so much faster too. Instead of having to go up a very steep incline for your ramps into a dump trailer.

National 4300 and we just picked this up. It's dump body. It's got a hold down.

Side gate here. Look at this. It's got the DT 466 engine which people say is a little underpowered.

I thought it was a 469. Is it 466 or 469? I can't remember that.

DT 469. Okay. Yeah. So just for Brian just For Brian.

Oh, my gosh.

But this thing is huge. It's huge. It's stupid long. My guys don't like it, and there's a whole conversation there. We're gonna give it a try out for three or four months. Yeah. The guys continually just say, we don't like it. We don't want to use it. We're gonna.

A couple things that actually I like about this truck is that there's that rail on the bottom of the bed for people to stand on. So someone could jump up on the tire, stand on that, and then kind of shimmy their way around the edge of the bed. That being said, that obviously isn't the most safe thing, but it's really handy to get, like, two little tools out of the back of the bed. Also, right behind Caleb, there is a side gate, which is really useful because then you can still put, like, a wheelbarrow up there and not have to worry about going around the back of the truck to get tools out. Really like that feature. But I think what he's talking about here is going to be about the length of this vehicle. Like, it's tough. It's tough to get this in a tight spot. If you have a trailer on top of this massive truck, you're looking at, like, a massively long rig that's tough to get into smaller areas. Definitely awesome, though, for hauling a lot of debris or mulch and light material, because you get a lot of stuff inside these trucks.

That we're gonna trade out.

Why didn't you get the 75, 000 dump truck, bro?

Boy, I tell you, we're 25, 000 in missing right now.

And I'm just. It doesn't work.

No, but it's a great question, right?

Because it's like, oh, your guys are wanting one thing. You're wanting this.

You guys are both working together, trying.

To figure it out. Yeah.

And we're trying to. And at a point we can afford it is the big thing. Right. So we got to be functional. It's got to be able to do what we need to do. It's got to be able to dump. It's got to have the backpack toolboxes.

It's got to have all these sides come off.

Yeah, these sides. These sides come out here. Course. But that side folds down, so it's wonderful for loading palace material.

We'll go around.

Yeah, absolutely.

There you go.

So this is, you know, you're, what, 14, 15 years in business?

You said 20, technically. Want to get crazy about it? Okay.

Look at this man.

This truck. I love this truck. My guys don't. And that's the difference, right? So like you got to.

So I just want to say this and that is this. He's been in business for 20 years. I think probably a little bit less than that for this landscaping business. But I just wanna make the point that is you don't have to grow to this size in two years. Just being self aware, growing the business slowly, being really frugal is totally fine. I can guarantee that. That's probably why one of the reasons his first business, he said his contracting business didn't do well is because a lot of people just try to grow it so quickly that they grow it beyond their capability and they grow it beyond their financial capability and stress and all the rest of it. And they have to kind of reset, step the business back, back in the amount of revenue or employees that they have. And so growing your business over 15, 20 years, like I promise you, you can pay things off, you can run it much more efficiently. You get to know your equipment, you get to know your employees, usually have them sticking around longer because you don't have a bunch of turnover and trying to grow, grow, grow, grow. So there's definitely no shame in growing a business over the course of 10, 15 years that is really profitable. Great profit margins and super reliable. So just wanted to throw that in there.

Came with the guys and make sure you're buying the stuff that they're actually going to use, not what you think is going to be usable. Because I'm not in the field anymore. I'm. I'm in the office selling and managing. This thing's been wonderful. We bought it a few years ago. Absolutely love it.

How much is this? A 20 grand?

50 grand? This used was about 40,000. So it had under a thousand hours on it.

And I'm here buying like I'm buying $14,000 lawnmowers.

Freaking out. Do it without taking. Wow, Crazy expensive.

I know, right?

Yeah. So excavators are really expensive. Especially if you're gonna go with cat or bobcat, some of these better brand names. But again they are doing hardscaping. So keep that in mind. If you're using an excavator once a week, you probably don't need to buy one quite yet. Or once a month maybe. This is kind of. This is something I said to the franchisees this past week and I kind of see as three different stages of when you should use equipment. Number one, you should use as much like the smallest piece of equipment you possibly can for as long as possible. So for example, if you are doing spraying, I would try to get away with a backpack spray as long as possible. You're probably not gonna do massive jobs, obviously, but like, as long as you possibly can use just the backpack sprayer, use that. Then stage two is like, you're getting so many of those jobs are getting a little bit bigger. You're like, okay, I'm gonna rent a piece like a sprayer tank once a month and I'm gonna go do a whole bunch of jobs for spraying. I'm gonna knock them out so much faster because I have this bigger piece of equipment. Then you rent that out and after a few months, like, you know what, I can't get it done in one or two days. Now that's when you go buy the equipment. Alright. So stage one is like, use the smallest piece of equipment that you possibly can to save money. Then two is rent that piece of equipment and then when you're using it super consistently, then go buy it and make it your own. Alright. So you might be a smaller operation or just getting started into hardscaping. You don't need to go buy this piece of equipment to become a hardscaper or a landscaper. You need to. You can just rent this piece of equipment as needed and get involved even earlier in jobs that don't require an excavator. And you can do a lot of it more manually.

Right from when I was in lawn care. Cause I started out in lawn care and like you could buy a D. This is how you know you're getting old, Brian. You start dating yourself. I guess like. Yeah, when I was your age, we could buy a good, you know, rider for, you know, seven or eight grand.

Yeah.

And now they're 13. Something like. Oh my God.

Wow.

That is awesome, dude. Yeah, this thing has turned a lot of revenue. This thing's been a wonderful purchase. On my gosh. Who did this?

What do we got?

Holy underwear. We got a nice gray man. That sucks. That's new.

But hashtag employees.

It is, it happens. And I've. I've put my share of dings and dents on things. Yep. You know, you want your guys to like inform you when they do it, but a swing like that, somebody hit it when they swung around. Oh. And they maybe not even didn't even know.

It's a little dimple, gives it character.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure.

You're just another actor out there, another fake contract.

So this is definitely something that comes with having employees that is just damage to your equipment and things like that. The goal, like Caleb said, is to try to get them to talk about it, like, tell you at least. And so making it as safe as possible for your employees to tell you when they did damage something or make a mistake is the best, because otherwise it's ten times worse when you hear about it or see it and you weren't told about it, like no one told you. And so definitely trying to make that safe space where they can feel like they can come talk to you about a mistake or a damage to a piece of equipment. On PvP, their performance dollars would be on the chopping block if they made a damage like this to our equipment. So either our equipment or.

The customer's property. And so definitely they don't want to tell us. And so having other employees on site is going to help with that. But in the day, it's going to happen sometimes. And like he said, the employee might not even have known about it if he was just turning the excavator, it was behind him. So honestly, that's what you kind of have to default to to stay in your sane mind. It's just that people do want to do their best and they. They aren't trying to come out and get you and just to have the mentality, hey, look, they probably didn't see it or like, they didn't know and. And maybe we were wrong about that. But you got to have that mentality. Otherwise you just start micromanaging the employees.

That's all of us.

So, yeah, F250. We just bought this year to replace the old rust bucket over there.

But now, how do you like the rigid toolbox?

Thank you, Brian, for asking. I thought you'd never ask. It's a great toolbox.

Hey, by the way, all you guys that keep asking, Caleb, he was confiding in me. He's like, man, the number one question I get, it's not about the cat, it's not about the truck. It's hot as they like his rigid toolbox. And so I'm like, the toolbox. He goes, I don't know what the affinity is with the toolbox.

Yeah, people ask all the time. It's crazy.

Hey, if you watch this part in the video, you got to leave me a comment down below. How's the toolbox? How do you love the toolbox? That's the phrase that pays.

Okay.

And leave a big thumbs up if you guys are enjoying the video. Again, makeshift. Quick video here, Caleb showing us this whole little setup here. And, well, that little setup. This is a really impressive operation. Dude, this is awesome, man.

It's been the dreams of my kid contractor self. Yeah. Coming to fruition and been a long road.

How do you love the toolbox, dude?

Love.

That's the phrase. That dump trailer.

Yeah, dump trailer. Love it. I wish we bought one of these. Way too late in the game.

Okay.

Like, I mean, but we've had it for five or six years or something. But I should have bought one. One of the first things I ever bought in business. Yeah. Like, you've got your dump insert. So you've got that. That thing. This is number nine limestone. Not number 69 limestone, but number nine limestone.

Yeah.

That's what we use for bedding material, for paper patio. So about one inch of that over top of your compacted base.

Wow.

So what Caleb was referring to when he said about the dump insert was the truck that Brian has has a dump insert inside the truck. And so we really like dump trailers. We have four of them at the one location in Bellingham. We got another one down in Mount Vernon, and we love them. The reason I prefer a dump trailer over a dump truck is a dump truck is usually gonna cost a lot more. You need a bigger engine. It's more maintenance. Whereas the dump trailer, it doesn't have an engine. Right. And doesn't have all the crazy electronics and all the rest of it that the truck does. And so traditionally, a truck with a dump trailer is gonna cost less than just the dumped truck, the big one. Right. And traditionally, when you start heavily using them and putting like 4 yards of gravel and all the rest of it, if you put that onto a dump truck, the wear and tear on that truck is more expensive, and the maintenance per mile is more expensive than the dump trailer. So we really like these dump trailers because I can put a 3/4 ton pickup, pull a dump trailer that has a piece of equipment on it, or mulch or gravel or all the rest of it. Very versatile. If you're getting into, like, small landscaping cleanups, Great piece of equipment. And we just try to keep the same size, color, and type of all our trailers so that as we scale, as long as someone knows how to drive one of them and operate one of them, they can use all of them.

Need a dust cover? Gosh darn it.

What is this, seven by 14? This is a little longer, maybe six.

Yeah. I think some 14, some 16. And I would recommend going no smaller than that.

Yeah.

The great thing about dump trailers is they dump. You can still haul a skid steering if you need. It's a little sketchy loading them, but they're so versatile. They're so great for about seven grand. Like.

Absolutely.

It's a wonderful entry level rig. If you can't afford a full dump.

Full.

Full fledged dump truck or anything like that. Highly recommend tons of tool storage. Tons of tools. We do when we're on site and we damage irrigation or whatever the case is, like, we want to have everything we possibly need on site to handle things. We don't want to make a trip to town to get a part or a piece or a tool.

Sure.

I'm allergic to that. I freaking hate that.

And so you just rent this place month to month, correct?

Yeah, basically.

Yeah.

Okay. Essentially. Yeah.

It's reasonable.

Yeah, it's. It's very reasonable. Okay.

Yeah. Everybody wants a big shop. And I'm like, well, you can just rent like storage lockers for a couple.

You can. To get started. Absolutely. At this point, I want to be like. Like I said, we're trying to keep our overhead as low as possible. We really need two of those units. Yeah, we're just trying to, you know, that's one little place we can save some money. Lean and mean, you know, we are. We're trying to run Lean to mean because I want to put money into a facility away from my house that I can sell in 30 years, that I build equity in and sell and use that as part of my retirement chunk. So that's why I don't want to put my shop at my house.

Well, that's a quick tour.

Manicom. Everybody loves Kennycom. This thing is wonderful. It swivels, dumps. This is a powered wheelbarrow. I'd highly recommend if you just do general landscaping. This thing gets rid of your wheelbarrows. It's on track. So it's general in yards. Yeah. This thing is legit. This thing is wonderful. And, you know, shout out to Annie Muller and Jeremy Swihart for being my mentors and influencers on buying this thing. It is the shit. It is so good. I love language, Brian.

I'm sorry.

I get so pumped about that thing. It is awesome.

This thing is sweet, dude.

So this goes right back to the conversation we were having about, you know, the three stages. Right. Like, at first you do not need this piece of equipment. I'd imagine this is at least 5 to $7,000. I'm not familiar with this brand, but, like, you don't need that. First you can just do manual wheelbarrows. But then if you start Getting a couple really big jobs, maybe you rent it out, see if you like it. And then if you start using and doing a lot of hardscaping, like heavy pavers and concrete and gravel all the time, that's when you go buy it. Right. And so this is one of the risks of people watching a shop tour like this. And like, oh, if I'm going to be a hardscaping guy, I need an excavator, a dump trailer, a tilt trailer, and one of these awesome automated wheelbarrows. You don't need that to get started. Start off with the basic, simplest tools you can, and then when you start growing a little bit, rent them out. And then stage three is go buy your own when it's. When. When it's worth it.

All right. We've gotten big on buying some bulk supply. We've really. It's crazy how much time, which translates to money that this saves having materials on hand at the shop. So the guys need a couple rolls of ECM erosion control mat, which is a straw blanket.

Yep.

They grab it throwing a truck. They don't have to go to a supplier and get it, Waste an hour or two. Same with the mulch. We buy semi loads of palletized mulch. That's a whole conversation its own.

So this is a really good point. Just back to what we talked about with the shop space and renting is again in the morning, if you're wasting an extra 10 or 15 minutes and you multiply that by 5, 10, 15 employees, as you grow, it becomes more and more of a labor cost. And so we also have bulk materials at our shop because every single day we have six or seven, you know, projects being done. And they got dump trailers and materials being loaded. And we got skid steers, three skid steers at the one shop just to load the materials in the morning. And that's a big expense, but trust me, it's a whole lot cheaper for them to load up their material in 10 minutes than to drive 15 minutes, sit for 20 minutes waiting for other. All the other landscapers to get their material and then driving to their job. And now the first hour and a half of the day is wasted. So great point here. Keeping materials is expensive sometimes because you got to buy the inventory. It sits there a while, but as long as you can turn it enough and you have the space for it, it's a great investment in terms of efficiency.

Right. Its own YouTube video. Yeah. As far as like bulk versus bag, we don't have a loader here. Okay. Rarely, because it's usually on a job site. So we can't easily scoop up bag, you know, bulk mulch. Right. We can sure throw a 14 bag of cubic yard mulch on a truck in no time.

So this kind of goes back to our stage one, stage two and stage three. Like stage one is you go to Lowe's or Home Depot or whatever and you pick up bags of mulch. Stage two is kind of where Caleb's at, where you keep pallets of bagged mulch on site at your shop. That's great. And then stage three is probably having bins of bulk material with a loader. Right. So again, you don't need to go to stage three right away. He's been in business for 20 years and still recognizes, hey, I should still stay at stage two. When he probably builds his own facility at his house and everything, he'll probably have stage 3 type of material bins. Right. And so again, start stage one, go get the bags yourself. Stage two, you have some storage space, you can put it on site, save some time. And then finally you get a loader and get bulk material and you can save even more time.

And then also for inventory purposes, we know like four bags come back. We know what the inventory is exactly. Cubic yardage we have on hand if we need to calculate.

Well, plus you're able to probably buy in bulk and save some money.

Yeah, we get a great deal. We buy it by the semi load and we shop it out to a supplier that we deal with and we got a great price on it and it's still a little more than bulk, but it's sitting there, it's protected from the weather.

And we just can control inventory so easily.

You got the enclosed trailer, is that like the crown jewel?

It's a hardscape trailer and it gets parked on job sites. It's got everything we need in it to run a hardscape job as far as tools and all that kind of stuff goes. Yep, branded out very well. It's a mobile billboard, so you definitely want that. I love it. Clean and simple on the side so people can see it.

So this is one thing that I really enjoy seeing in hardscaping companies and that is these enclosed trailers that have all their tools and equipment in there. If you're doing hardscaping and you're doing big projects, this is a great investment. Get an enclosed trailer or an old mowing enclosed trailer, like that idea. Put racks up inside, put a whole bunch of tools inside, and then when you go to a three, four week job. Just park the trailer, lock the wheels, lock the back. That's important because they can get broken into. But great efficiency so you're not running back and forth from your shop to get little tools or supplies or pieces and parts. Definitely a great idea.

Just did a podcast about trailer and vehicle wrap design. Yeah, simple is the way to go. Less is more. You have.

What is this?

I'd say 8 and a half by 30.

It's a monster. 8 and a half 24.

8 and a half 24.

It's probably on the verge too big.

Okay.

I wish it were a little shorter because getting it on site.

But I love the simple design. And they got a little bit of wrap on the back for like the.

Landscape patio.

And that whole layout courtesy of my buddy Brian Kellett. Brilliant.

Alright, so we're gonna wrap it up there. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you learned something about your lawn care, your landscaping business, something you can take away and implement in your own company. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure you subscribe like the video and comment below what you learned about in this video and let me know who you want me to react to next in their videos. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Mike Andes. You've been listening to Landscape Business.