How to Run a $350K Lawn Care Business Out of a STORAGE UNIT

Today we're gonna get some shop tours of several Augusta lawn care locations. Now you've already seen Chuck in the past. He showed the entire process of getting four brand new locations off the ground in a matter of just 30 days. However, we're gonna actually give you a more in depth tour of all the facilities in the storage units as well as using storage containers out in the shop space. Now there's gonna be four locations and it's gonna seem like a lot of the same. And that's kind of the goal. The goal is that when we create these multiple locations, it's copy and paste, copy and paste. So if you watch this, you're like, man, it seems like he's saying the same thing. That's a good thing. We're using systems and instead of just making things up or customizing the processes on every single location, doing this is what allows you to scale, have multiple locations and have a business that runs without you. Whether it's your shop space that we're showing today or every single process and system inside your business, it should be replicatable, duplicatable, and eventually become boring.

We're here at Concord. This is our fourth location and we have four different locations. We're kind of opening them all together. All of the territories butt up against each other. They're all centrally located, really close, really tight, heightened in. So again, you're going to see the exact same setup as at this location as all the other locations. So we'll start here. We got P1 is always what we classify our landscape truck. So you got P1 here, V6. Both of these trucks are V6, average about 15, 15, 5. And you'll see everything is going to be identical from here to all the other locations. So we have this again, V6 long bed. And then we have the dump trailer here, which is again six by ten, nothing fancy, three foot sides, tarp. It'll do the job. It's going to cut, it's going to carry everything we do. We don't do a crazy amount of hauling because we do simple services. So you're not going to get a whole lot of rock or any of that stuff. Like we don't do that. Five yards of mulch fits in there just fine. I can get 60 bales of pine straw in there. And that's just stack, you know, height. I could probably go higher. We want to bungee and all that mess. But from a weight standpoint, I'm not really pressed about it. Mowing setup, same exact thing. Blower rack, weed eater, Trimmer rack, tool rack in the middle, Gas cans, Trimmer string and sprayer rack on the driver's side. This would be your curb side. So we put all of this stuff here. These are. We have two parking spots here at this location. The only parking spots available in the entire service area. You'll see a little bit of. Not an ideal setup. When you come to the storage unit side of it. They don't, like. They don't let you make keys to these things. So we run a fence. We find somewhere to put it, whether it's on the door handle, a fence. But we put one of these lock boxes right here like this. And then we just. It's just a code, combo code, all that good stuff. The key to the unit is right here. So the guys can come here, grab the key to the unit when they park the truck, unload everything, put the key back in there. And now there's a key for the facility. Now we're gonna drive up to the actual storage unit. Again, exact same setup everywhere. $6,700 for the dump trailer. 15,5 for each of the trucks. 15 to 15,5 for each of the trucks. All of this was done in 30 days. So you don't have to get hung up on finding the perfect place the first time, making it, you know, this massive shop space and any of that. Just don't need it. Like, get what works to get you started. And we'll run $300,000 on all these setups. So. And if they really hustle and crush it, we could do 350 with exactly the setups that you guys are seeing. As you see, we're coming around. Very nice facility. The door access, there's no garage doors, right? So all you've seen is interior access. They do have exterior access up here, but they're man doors. They're oversized man doors. So we're running 36 inch rights.

Our average turn space is only about 8,000 square feet. But as you can see, it's just an oversized fan door. This is the part I'm not a huge fan of. But again, the only parking we could find in this area, I haven't seen in this one. So we'll see what it looks like.

It's not ideal. Door stopper will hold this door open. So when you bring the mower in and out, it's just. It's very tight, but it's whatever you got to make it work sometimes, right? So dry erase board these for the trucks. Long hedge trimmer. Weed eater. Edger blower. Mower Push mower. This is a residential Honda. That's all it is, just a residential Honda. We're going residential 21 push mowers because we use our standards for everything. 36 inch standard ladder. All the tools are in there that you would need. Two blowers, handheld hedge trimmer, all your mixed fuels, your gases, all those things. You got another bucket with some more tools in it, shovels, things like that, and wheelbarrow. Again, there would be no problem fitting another mower, another push mower and a couple extra weed eaters. And you could, you could run a half a million dollar business out of a 10 by 20 storage unit. Again, not ideal because of the door access. This does fit and you got about 3 or 4 inches on each side. You just have to make sure you're doing right.

All right, so here we are in Huntersville, North Carolina again. You're going to see a lot of similarity, all identical. I ordered all the same equipment, pretty much bought the same types of trucks, slight variations, but basically all the same type things. Long bed, F150, V6. Doesn't matter, don't have to be fancy, right? Single cab, Everything's all single cab. Racks are set up exactly the same. We have the gas on this side, the trimmer strings, full sprayer rack on the driver's side. On the passenger side we have the blower racks and then the trimmer racks. Then we put the tool. Again, we put the tools in the middle. Shovels, all that stuff keeps them kind of out of the way for the crew with the ramp rack. Collectively, the trucks all averaged about 15k. Like I was kind of stating. We had again some 17, 18, some that were 12. Like this one was 12. This one is the only one you'll see that is different. It is a short bed, very similar to Mooresville V6 pulls. A dump trailer has no problems, right? So if you have a trailer truck, everybody wants to get big shiny F350s diesel. All this, what I would say stupidness and crazy. This does just fine. We've had it Mooresville for two years, no issue. Dump trailers. Again, $6,700, six by tens with a tarp, three foot sides. Does everything we needed to do. We're not doing concrete, we're not doing hardscaping, none of that. So this works just fine. Again, two trucks, one mowing, one landscape and we'll do. We can easily do 350 with this setup. And again, this is just a storage unit, right? So at this facility we were able to get both of the parking spaces Side by side, which is kind of nice. And then we'll hop in and we'll drive over to open.

Now we'll head over there and you guys will kind of see like we did all of this in 30 days. So in 30 days we bought trucks, we got them painted, we got decals. So every morning the guys can come in here, they'll get their trucks, they'll drive over here and they'll load up all the trucks with, you know, whatever equipment they have. Now you will see some different setups across everybody, but they're very similar. Get a storage unit, get a UPS box and just go to work. You don't have to have this ginormous facility to run a business.

This is a 10x20.

What you'll notice is the exact same equipment at all locations. There is absolutely no difference on this side. Same thing. You've kind of seen dry erase board, key hooks here for all the different trucks labeled P1, P2 too stairs. I mean you kind of got everything right. Dry race board to put stuff on here. Everything is nice, organized in a good system. Push mower label, stand on mower label. You have. You got tailgates, just kind of say, but trash bins, Trash bins. Connor's got himself a nice little kind of desk set up that he found. It was, I think he said it was like 10 bucks, right? He can come in here, do his work, hit the WI fi off the. On the. To swap and do whatever, little estimate, follow ups, things like that. He's got a. Off a little workstation, all his door hangers. Everything is just organized and tiny and that's kind of what we want. All of his tools are together. Here's his wheelbarrow blowers, hedge trimmers. What you guys will see is we bought exactly the same for everybody, right? Two weed eaters, edger and hedge trimmers, two blowers, gas cans, all of these things. A mower, 36 inch stand on rights. I just went in and bought four of them. Just got four. Four push mowers and then we gave one to each. So every single location has exactly the same thing. No deviations other than he got a short bed. But equipment is the same. Storage units, all of this, 30 days. Just go in, get them and get to work. Like you don't have to get everything right away as far as big shop space or anything like that. It's literally get in and you'll see a recurring theme with all of these same equipment. All you do is get in, get out, get started.

We are At Highland Creek. You'll see a little bit different setup at this location here because we rushed to get it. We are slightly outside the territory about a half mile because we couldn't find a storage unit. So when you don't have any time, like, you guys will see a little bit of differences here that aren't ideal. But just get in and get to work. Like not a big deal. We'll make it work. So you got standard long bed truck, same exact setup as all the other trucks. On the passenger side, always on the patch. That's the curb side, lower rack, weed eater, tool in the middle. Then you got your spool, gas cans are over here and then your sprayer rack. This truck is actually a V8. It's the only one we have in the fleet that is a V8. Otherwise they're V6s. Again, when you're buying eight trucks, it doesn't matter. You just kind of buy whatever is available. And we bought eight trucks within 30 days. Really, I had them all bought within probably two weeks. Just have an open mind. Got them painted, decal, all that good stuff. Now we're hop back in the car and drive to the other parking spot. At this location it is three separate areas. We're at the very front of the storage unit. Now we're going to go to the very back of the storage unit.

This is not an ideal and it's boring.

Not an ideal situation. Obviously you'll kind of see not far, I mean, but it's a storage unit, right? So one truck has to be parked at the very front. They have a little parking unit where we were at. And now we're going to drive all the way to the backside. And this is where they park like trailers, RVs, things like that. Ultimately, I would like to park this truck back here. But for again, for now, parking is very hard to find in this area because we have a few lakes, some pretty large lakes. So a lot of boats, things like that. And then it's just space is expensive in the Charlotte area. But we see as you can tell, kind of it. It opens up into this big wide area which is great, but there's limited spacing. So. And again we have to drive to this back lot here. So we'll hop out, kind of show you this setup where he's parked out here. Again, this is Highland Creek, but it is a little bit different. So this is his long spot, 40 foot spot. This is where the truck that goes with the dump trailer. This is where he parks at. As you can see, again Long bed. This one's a GMC 11. All again, all these trucks on average are about 15, 15, five for each one of the truck. All eight of them. That's kind of the average pricing we got on them. And then you see we have the dump trailer. Same thing. 6x10. This is a V6 as well. His other one is the only one that is not a V6. It's a V8. Standard 6x10 dump trailer, three foot sides. Tarp just ordered for them. $6,700 on all of the trailers. Plus, plus packs of title. We're gonna end up making like 72 or 73. This is it, man. Nothing fancy, just V6. Everybody ask, why are we getting these sixes? What? We just get what's available, right? So like if I can find all V6s, I'm not going to discriminate against the V6 because we're also not. We're not pulling, you know, 15,000 pounds of rock at most. We will probably pull five yards. Like that'll hold. I know those will hold five yards. That's what Mooresville has is a 6x10. Almost identical. It's just yellow and it's just fine. It does everything we need it to do and it does it well. Now here he actually has water split spigots that he's able to get water from. And he also has electric. So like every so often they've got electrical outlets we don't know if we're allowed to use. But we're just going to use until they tell us no. But as you can see, front of the lot, very back. And now we're driving up towards the gate is in front of us. So then we'll get out and we'll look at the storage unit real quick. I don't know what this looks like yet. I haven't been here since I bought and stuffed all the equipment. I unlocked it. I purposefully did not want to see in it yet. So it has been unlocked. I don't know what it's going to look like. So you guys are going to see it for the first time.

Awesome. Pretty organized, right? So we run the same setups everywhere. Same exact equipment. Same exact mowers. Like mowers are saying we needed the same. Everything's identical. So you can see he's got everything labeled. He's got the dry erase board. His handwriting is just like mine. Like a child. I love it. So there's, you know, he's. He's got a little motivational things like he's just got all kinds of different. Different things. When you kind of run through this, you've got different. He's got a service area up. He's got his P4P explanation. Like he's kind of got certain things up here, which is great. All his tools, the blower rack. He's got all his equipment. I mean, he's got everything kind of out and organized into the things. And then he's got his blower, wheelbarrow mower. This thing only gives up like 12ft. We're not trimming massive trees. So as you can see, it's. It's very bare bones. But there's absolutely no reason this setup will do. Probably can handle 3 to 350 before we have to buy another truck. The. The good thing about this is in these storage units we can add. We have plenty of room to add another mower to come in here and another push mower that may go another three or four feet back. And that'll get us to 455 and very easily do that of a storage unit. So now we'll move on to the next one. So here's kind of the setup for Mooresville. It is an existing location.

About 450 to 500 this year in 2023. Straight profit mode. As you can see, we. We do have two trucks here that are set up for mowing. These are. This is an F150, 1500 Silverado. Exactly the same ramp racks. Racks are set up exactly the same. Blower trimmer racks, Gas cans on both sides. Spool rack and then the spray racks. Tool rack. We put in the middle. We like to have it off the tail. Put it up behind the window. It kind of keeps things out of the way when you. You're only grabbing what you need when you need it. And then this one here, this is again short bed F150 V6. These are all V6s. It pulls our dump trailer. Luckily this dump trailer is nice yellow. So it kind of matches. Goes with the Augusta Gold six by ten. Every location corporately. And you'll see at the other videos to the other locations, everyone has a 6x10. The only difference is theirs are black. Because it's about availability and cost. And we were able to get those the newer locations over prices. But they were. They were pretty cheap compared to a yellow one. Now with the prices the way they are, all these. Everything here was bought in 2021. This is again an existing location. And if you look over here to our right at Mooresville, we get to Put all of our debris on site. And the guy we rent from takes care of it. So we pay 600 bucks, dump all the debris right here. And then this is. You know, this side over here is obviously ours. Ours is just this gravel plot here. The red gas can right there. We have mixed fuel right there. It's a 15 gallon. So that the guy. I fill it up maybe once a week, once every two weeks. And the guys come in, fill up their mixed pans and we get on down the road. We have access. You can see the electric cord or the extension cord over there. We have access to electric and water on site plus debris removal for the $600. This 8 foot wide by 40 foot container. You can see we have everything kind of lined up right inside the door. We always put the keys. P1, P2, P3, extra dump trailer keys. And these are just extra keys to the locks on the trucks. Have a blower set up. 1, 2, 3, 4. It coincides with the truck that they go with. That goes to P1 2, P3. And we have a fourth one, which we don't have a four truck. But that goes with the second guy that works the landscaping truck. Dry race board. I have all the vehicle service here. Equipment service when it's needed. And then our audible password I always put right there as well. Guys put their days off here in the corners. Then you can see here's all of our. Our two. I said all of them. But the two stand on mowers. We have those lined up here. All the handhelds. Again, P1 stuff, which is landscaping. So they get the long hedge trimmer, short hedge trimmer. A weed eater. Or it is a combi system. So they can't put a measure if they need that. V2, V3. And then we do have an extra set here. As well as a weed eater on the floor that we. That's the oldest one we have, not the greatest, but it's a good backup. There's no reason to throw it away. We just service it more than I like. So we. But we keep it as an extra wheelbarrows here. They've been repaired. Push motors here. Everything always has a place and it's nice and tidy. Then we have the buckets. We do not back clippings, but we go ahead and we leave a bucket there. The guys have sticks, things like that. We put all the tools into one bucket ladder. Any landscape attachments, things up there that we do, which we don't do a lot of extra services anymore. So some of those will obviously probably never get used again. Blade sharpener, tools, kind of the miscellaneous stuff goes back there. We do use a chain hoist, hooks it on the front and that's how we lift up the front of the motors. We do have an aerator. An aerator. But we don't use it anymore. Unfortunately. We don't do four aerations anymore. So we did in the first and second year. The third year, we just funneled it down so much that it's. Honestly, we're going to end up selling it and replacing it. So sprayers. And this is what our container looks like every day for more smoke.