By day, Staff Sergeant Bobby Beard readies equipment for the Alabama Army National Guard. By early evening, he changes uniforms and jumps on his Walker Mower to maintain his customers’ yards. Beard, a 20-year veteran with the Alabama National Guard, has been doing this double-duty since 2000 when his unit in Montgomery went to a four-day week.
“With Mondays off and a total of 12 four-day weekends, I needed something to do,” says Beard. “So I purchased a Snapper zero-turn mower, sent out a few flyers and started to mow. My wife thought it was just a passing fad. Six years later I’m still mowing and still enjoying it. With only 12 customers, I’m not getting rich, but I bring in enough revenue to go on vacations at the shore and support my main hobby, riding my Harley-Davidson.”
Beard calls his mowing revenue “mad money,” but for his customers, the service is anything but mad. Instead of spending their weekends mowing and otherwise maintaining their yards, they just write a check and let Beard do the rest.
“I purchased a 42-inch GHS Walker Mower my second year in business,” Beard recalls. “My mowing friends told me that was the machine I needed, and they were right. It’s maneuverable and does a great job of bagging grass clippings and leaves. Not long after I got the mower, I pulled up to a property to mow and a neighbor, a husband and wife team, was push mowing with two mowers. I finished three lawns and loaded my Walker back on the trailer before they were finished. The next day, I received a call to do their yard, too.”
Close Proximity
This contractor’s routine is fairly straightforward. He goes off to work at 7 a.m. and returns home at 4 p.m. (now back on a fiveday work week). Then, from 4:30 until dark he mows lawns with a helper who trims, edges and blows. He rarely, if ever, works Saturdays, and barring rain, it takes him only a couple of evenings to finish his entire route.
Beard says one of the secrets to his success is having his customers in close proximity to each other, and to his home. It takes him only a couple of minutes to get to their properties, and once there, he can mow several yards without loading and unloading his machine. “That means a lot,” says Beard. “I would rather give customers a $10 break per mow if there are several other yards to maintain in the area rather than having to load, unload and drive several miles to maintain a single yard or two at full price.”
What is full price? Beard says it varies, but on average he wants to make $1 per minute. “Time is money,” he adds, “and if I can be efficient in getting to a property and mowing it, then that’s more money I can bring home.”
His Walker, he says, has helped him in several ways. In addition to being reliable and maneuverable, it bags the Bermuda grass without clogging. He simply dumps the clippings or leaves them in 65- gallon bags (which he gets from his Walker dealer) and deposits them on the curb. The city picks up the debris twice a week.
Wet ’n Wild
Shortly after buying his Walker Mower, Beard joined forces with another part-timer to mow a total of 35 yards. His partner’s Walker took a bit of a spill one day into a swimming pool. As Beard tells it, his partner was mowing near the pool when one of the drive wheels got extra traction on the cement walk and spun the machine around and into the water. It was submerged for two hours before they could get a tow truck to pull it out.
“Believe it or not,” says Beard, “we replaced the spark plugs and the mower started right up. Of course, we took it to the dealer for a little preventive maintenance, but it only cost us a hundred bucks to get it rolling again, not counting the tow-truck fee.”
Beard doesn’t work with his partner anymore – but not because of the water episode. Some of the accounts were every-other-week mows and several required long windshield time to maintain. So he and his partner split up the accounts with Beard taking 12 weekly mow accounts that are virtually out his back door.
“Around here we can start mowing in February, and then mow twice a month in March and April,” Beard relates. “From May to September it’s every week, and then I back off to twice a month for October and November. If it’s a warm month of December, I’m likely to get a call to spruce up a property right before the holidays.”
In five years, he has put 2,000 hours on his Walker and has no immediate plans to replace it. And he has no immediate plans to retire, from either the Guard or from mowing.
“I was going to stop mowing when I turned 50,” he adds. “That would have been this March. But then I got to thinking about what I would do if I didn’t mow.” When asked what he would do if his Guard unit was called up to go to Iraq, Beard just shrugs his shoulders and says, “I would have to give up my accounts and hopefully pick them back up when I returned.”
When it comes to serving his country and his customers, his country comes first. But he gets no arguments from his customers who appreciate the service they get while he’s doing double-duty.
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