Scheduling family vacations can be an occupational hazard when you manage a family-owned business, but when a surprise visit from out-of-town ants turns into a permanent stay, lawn care professionals are challenged to control these pests.
Last year, the Red Imported Fire Ant hit a little too close to home for Scott Williams, vice president of Lawn Master, a lawn care business that he manages with his father, Joe, and brother, Jeff. During a rainy summer soccer game, Williams’ son was attacked by a colony of fire ants when he accidentally disturbed a mound in the middle of the playing field.
“I guess the rain stirred up the ants,” says Williams. “My son fell down right onto a fire ant mound and didn’t realize it until a couple minutes later when he had more than 70 bites all over his body. It was a real eye-opener for me.”
Scott Williams’ father, Joe, founded Lawn Master in Pensacola, Fla. in 1981. Scott worked for his father’s business during college and summer vacations. Soon after graduation from the University of West Florida in 1985, he joined the Lawn Master family operations. “My dad offered me the opportunity to use my degree in accounting to manage our finances, and I’ve been here ever since,” says Williams. “My older brother, Jeff, graduated with a degree in turfgrass science from Mississippi State University. It works out great because I’m the inside guy, and he’s the outside guy.”
Williams and his 30 employees, six of whom are family members, service the Florida Panhandle from the Alabama state line to Destin, Fla., where the fire ant is an infamous insect.
Unwelcome Visitors. With more than 3,500 lawn care accounts, Lawn Master services customers from mid-February to early December with six annual lawn treatments, three shrub care treatments, and one application for fire ant control. Although 90 percent of the clientele is residential, Williams says the 5 percent of school athletic fields his crew services tend to be the most difficult because they require year-round attention.
“Most fields are multi-purpose,” says Williams. “They are shared between the baseball, soccer and football teams and the marching band. Fire ants are a big problem in Florida, and school districts have zero tolerance for mounds on their properties because they have to keep the students safe.”
Four years ago, Williams was looking for a professional product that would efficiently control fire ants. He quickly took notice of TopChoice insecticide, which offers protection from fire ants for up to a full year. Unlike other professional treatments, TopChoice remains in the soil to prevent new colonies from forming and is impervious to the habitual rainfall in Florida. Lawn Master applied the insecticide to a local campground, and after the product eliminated the fire ant problem, Williams incorporated the fire ant application as part of his standard lawn care package. He now enthusiastically promotes TopChoice to customers who have children or pets frequenting the outdoor areas.
Fire ants, with colonies comprised of approximately 100,000 to 500,000 workers, are extremely aggressive by nature and will attack when disturbed. Unlike most other stinging insects, they have the ability to sting multiple times. Twenty million people are stung annually by fire ants, and one-third of fire ant victims are under the age of 13. Ten to 15 percent of the general population is allergic to fire ant stings, which can cause severe swelling, epileptic seizures, respiratory problems and, in some cases, even death. Children are at high risk because they don’t pay attention to where fire ants may be foraging in a playing field or sandy area.
Added Family Value. Lawn Master has grown rapidly since its infancy, but when market competition intensified, the company was forced to search for new, innovative ways to bolster the efficiency of the overall operations. Most recently, Williams was one of the first lawn care operators to purchase TopChoice® plus Fertilizer, ordering 50,000 pounds of the new combination pesticide and fertilizer product at the 2006 Green Industry Expo (GIE) in Columbus, Ohio in November.
Williams first began investigating the formulated product when he realized that his crew could be saving time and money by applying fertilizer and fire ant control products together. Previously, Lawn Master did not make an insecticide application until the middle of the lawn care season, which required employees to make three separate trips to each property – one for fire ant control, one for fertilizer, and one for herbicide. He believes the new pesticide and fertilizer combination will increase productivity and also eliminate the time crunch his company faces every year with last-minute fire ant applications.
“Knowing we have a product we can put out there once a year for fire ants saves us repeat service calls. We expect to save money on the time and labor to go back out there and re-treat,” says Williams.
Honorary Family Members. When adding new products to their service cache, Williams stresses the importance of extensive employee training to allow them to share product information with customers. Lawn Master coaches its technicians with classroom-style instruction and hands-on field training, sends them to local, state, regional and association meetings, and brings in manufacturer representatives to discuss new products and cutting-edge lawn care techniques for pest and weed management.
“It’s good for our crews to receive training from experts outside the Lawn Master office,” says Williams. “We want our employees to feel like they are part of the family. We want them to have a vested interest in the company’s success.”
Although Lawn Master did not begin using TopChoice plus Fertilizer until spring of this year, Williams’ crews are learning the methods for application. Williams anticipates that the combination product will increase his company’s annual revenue.
Williams notes, “Although it’s challenging at times to work with your family and keep everyone from butting heads, it’s nice to have success within the family.”