Gearing Up

P.C. Brown – the namesake and owner of Dothan, Ala.-based P.C.’s Nursery and Landscaping – says a slow winter led into a booming 2009. He’s had to turn down jobs because he doesn’t have the time to do them, and he hired some employees in June.

"We had a slow November, December and January. That was the slowest time I had seen since I opened," Brown says. "It was scary slow."

But now, he adds: "We are as busy as we’ve ever been. It is hard to believe."

He credits his company’s reputation for doing quality work in a timely manner, as well as good repeat business from clients, for the uptick in sales.

"Customers aren’t going to open the phone book and have us be gone next week," he says

The company opened 17 years ago and runs a nursery, garden center and landscape business. The firm does between $1 and $2 million a year, and landscaping makes up about half of the annual revenue.

Brown uses a Vermeer T100 trencher for irrigation installations. He bought it outright about five years ago for $9,000 when he needed something that could cut through the hard Alabama clay.

"It is a heavier duty machine," Brown says, adding that he liked the machine’s weight and its welded-on teeth. He tried it out on the ground where they park a lot of trucks and equipment and was impressed at the results.

"We got clay down here as hard as concrete – literally, it’s hard as concrete," Brown says. "And this trencher will dig in that harder dirt, so in reality it makes it easier to trench for my employees."