Gerry White sees aeration as a way to give clients the healthy, green lawn they want – and produce a nice profit margin for his business, pH Lawn Care in Essex, Massachusetts. At heart, he’s an agronomist, after spending years working as a golf course superintendent. “The lawns we aerate are going to do better and so we’ll be more successful helping those clients,” White says.
When White took over pH Lawn Care earlier this year, aeration services amounted to about 3 percent of the company’s overall revenue. Now, sales are nearing 10 percent, and White would like to see that number climb to as high as 20 percent. “It’s a recurring service in my book,” he says of the importance of annual aeration.
Not to mention, aeration yields a profit margin or 20 to 25 percent, which is higher than other lawn care offerings, he says. Why is the service such a financial win for pH Lawn Care? White attributes its efficiency and efficacy to ride-on aerators, which work for most of his properties. “It’s a specialty machine that I can’t say enough about,” White says. “It increases productivity.”
In the first year, he paid off the machine in labor savings. For an acre property, he’d have to send two crewmembers and two walk-behind aerators to the site. “That doubles my payroll right there, and to price it competitively with other companies, I wouldn’t be able to do it,” he says.
Read more in our August issue here.