Larry Hickerson says he doesn’t do a whole lot of lawn fertilization in his business – but now he can do more. As the winner of the September Lawn & Landscape Online Sweepstakes, Hickerson, owner of Sand Hills Yard Maintenance, Ogallala, Neb., is the proud owner of a new LESCO rotary spreader.
“We have some independent contracts where we do lawn fertilization, so the spreader will be nice to have,” Hickerson says. “We also have snow contracts coming up and we’ll be able to use the spreader for those sites too.”
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The sweepstakes prize, soon to be in Hickerson’s equipment yard is an 80-pound capacity LESCO rotary spreader. The speader features:
Hickerson entered the sweepstakes by filling out a contest form online at www.lawnandlandscape.com, which he says he visits almost daily for business-related articles on everything from weed control to how to deal with customers. Sand Hills Yard Maintenance handles commercial work and currently has 72 apartment buildings on its client roster, as well as a city park and certain aspects of a large development going up in the area.
Hickerson says working hard and taking advantage of opportunities has been his key to making the business successful. “If you want to get into the business, you need to get really gutsy,” he comments. “Go out and start looking for contracts. We haven’t done much in the way of advertising. A lot of the business we create is developed on face-to-face contact with potential customers and word of mouth form our existing customers. My wife and I started the business to make a little extra money and within a year’s time we were looking for more equipment and looking at bigger jobs. This will be our second year in business and things are going really well.”