Early every morning, a Gardner Design crew heads out to a customer's home and turns a residential lawn into a work of art. Trees and shrubs are carted in and planted as flowers splash color throughout.
It’s that eye for color and design that makes Gardner Design, Bryn Mawr, Pa., a success. Formed seven years ago, Gardner Design is the natural outgrowth of a retail garden center business. “We’ve owned a garden center for years,” said Robert Gardner, owner.
In the early years, Gardner’s retail operation dabbled in the landscape business and consistently commanded robust sales. That’s one of the reasons Gardner began searching for a new landscape truck about eight years ago. “Even before I formed Gardner Design, we were doing bigger and bigger jobs on the retail side,” said Gardner. “We were hauling larger loads and we needed a truck to handle the job.”
But Gardner was looking for more than durability. He wanted to move an increasing amount of product and equipment. “We wanted to become more cost efficient, so we decided to switch from gasoline to diesel-powered trucks to capitalize on the fuel efficiency of a diesel engine,” he said. Gardner purchased a Mitsubishi Fuso FE, an 11,600-pound gross vehicle weight truck with a lift gate on the back for loading trees.
Gardner recently purchased a retail garden center that will operate under the name, Gardner’s Landscape and Nursery. Both operations will rely on Mitsubishi Fuso trucks to transport crew and equipment to jobsites. One four-wheel-drive truck is equipped with a backpack and dump body and is used for hauling trees, soil and mulch and other vehicles include specially designed shelving to haul flats of plants.
The author is a public relations consultant to Mitsubishi Fuso.
Explore the October 1998 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
