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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
“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.