Tools of the Trade: One Man, One Machine

A steep hill and the wear-and-tear of six decades on this earth convinced Sherman Henton that he needed to look into a better spreader/sprayer for his small, but growing lawn care business.

“I’ll be very candid,” Henton says. “I’m 50-something years old and a few years back I about died trying to walk a spreader up a hill on this lady’s property. She complained and I had to admit that there were lots of streaks and unevenness because of that incline. It was just too damned difficult to climb that hill, so I discounted her bill and apologized. At that point, my wife said, ‘If you’re going to play with the big boys, you have to play with their big toys.’”

So Henton started doing some serious shopping and ended up purchasing a PermaGreen SmartSteer Magnum spreader/sprayer.
That was five years ago, and he’s still loving the decision he made.

“I’d rather lose my wallet than lose my PermaGreen,” he says. “It’s been a lifesaver.”

Henton is the owner, operator and chief-cook-and-bottle-washer of Green View, Inc., in Marietta, Ga. – an affluent and highly competitive Atlanta suburb. Lawn care was a second career for him, but he’s committed to doing it right even though he’s still pretty much operating with one truck and one employee.

“This was a huge purchase for me, but I had to do it,” says Henton, who currently has about 65 residential and commercial customers in the burgeoning area. “It is the one piece of equipment that a small operator like me has to have.”

When Henton added the Magnum to his inventory five years ago, it was an important enhancement for his business and something that kept him from huffing and puffing up clients’ hills. However, what has really sold him on the product has been what’s happened in the intervening years.

“PermaGreen’s customer service has just been outstanding,” he says. “I’ve always had the feeling – and I know this sounds funny – that if the service rep who was on call was in the middle of his kid’s birthday party, he’d stop whatever he was doing and solve my problem. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve called with a breakdown and they’ve talked me through a fix while I was still on the site.”

Henton isn’t afraid to say that the original product he bought had a few faults.

“The mechanism that controls the hopper needed to be refined to be sturdier, and they could have done a better job with the pump and the transaxle,” he says.

Henton had to replace the transaxle – which was not covered under warranty – after relatively few hours, but wasn’t complaining because the company was “totally supportive” and shared the cost of fixing the problem.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of companies in my career,” he says, “but none has been more proficient in customer service.”

Henton continues to like the PermaGreen’s Honda 200cc engine, the big 150-pound hopper and the 12-gallon spray tank as well as the sulky, which hasn’t caused any problems.

“The mixing mechanism on the spray tank isn’t perfect, but it works really well overall.”

The 2009 version of the Magnum features a Peerless transaxle, a 5-mph top speed and a 2-gpm pump capable of covering 50,000 square feet at a 30-oz rate. It weighs in at 440 pounds and, according to Henton, is easy to load and unload.

If Henton sounds as if he would just say positive things about any old company, rest assured he doesn’t. When Lawn & Landscape contacted him, he was two seconds from blowing us off. Then, we mentioned PermaGreen.

“I wouldn’t be talking with you right now if we weren’t talking about their spreader,” Henton says. “That thing has been huge for my business.”