Call it cutting hedge. The Fort Worth entrepreneurs David Minor and Rick Onstott, who have teamed to build two nationally recognized commercial landscape firms before selling them, have started a third business — this one with all battery-powered mowers, blowers and trimmers.
The company, called The Greener Good, has already snagged some impressive clients including the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Minor, 66, views the green shift as a legacy play and a chance to help steer the industry toward a cleaner future. Minor says he wasn’t particularly cognizant of landscape firms’ role in air pollution during the earlier ventures, but started looking into it after he raised the possibility of a third firm during breakfast with his sister, an avocational environmentalist.
“She said, ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’” Minor said during an interview with Onstott at their headquarters, a north Fort Worth building Minor has owned for 27 years.
Minor is certainly a familiar player on the local and national entrepreneurial stage, having founded Minor’s Landscape Services and The Landscape Partners, earning recognition on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies, and eventually selling one firm to Asplundh, a national company, several years ago. Minor also is a founding director of the Neeley Entrepreneurship Center at the M.J. Neeley School of Business at TCU.
Minor waited out a noncompete agreement before launching The Greener Good. Onstott, 49, worked for Asplundh for a time after the sale. The two cite industry research that shows their electric blowers, for one, operate at about 65 decibels, much quieter than the 95-100 decibels of traditional gas-powered machines. Traditional gas-powered blowers emit as much carbon in one hour as an automobile that drives 300 miles, Minor and Onstott note.
The landscape firms previously operated by Minor and Onstott ran hundreds of pieces of gasoline-powered equipment, they said.
“You can imagine the carbon output that we were putting into the environment,” Minor said.
Early feedback from clients included a nod from a Southlake hotel that was sensitive about the operation of landscape equipment near the pool, he said. “The pool guests acknowledged how quiet our equipment is,” Onstott said.
The quieter equipment also means less risk of hearing loss for employees, they said.
“We are providing a safe place for our employees to operate,” they said.
Onstott says he was a skeptic when Minor approached him about the green idea, raising questions about battery life in daily operations, durability of machines, and the upfront expense of buying them.
“Quite honestly, it’s very expensive,” Onstott said.
His concerns faded after he traveled to Kansas City to look at battery-powered equipment being sold by a firm there.
“To my surprise, it was legitimately commercial,” Onstott said.
Minor and Onstott did an analysis comparing the operating costs of electric equipment to gas-powered machines over five years. While the cost of buying the appropriate commercial equipment is much higher, projected maintenance costs are much lower, and the expense of gasoline goes away.
“We used to have three mechanics working nonstop, not to mention all the parts (replacement and repair) and the oil changes,” Minor said. With the new firm, “you don’t have all that.”
The Stihl riding mowers also have onboard technology that lets operators regulate the amount of power they’re using in specific situations, potentially reducing battery drain, Minor and Onstott said. The mowers can operate eight hours per day on one charge, they said. The handheld machines can operate for about 45 minutes on one charge. Crews bring a number of batteries to a job. Instead of a gasoline refill, “You just change the battery,” Minor said.
Bottom line for potential clients: Minor and Onstott said their pricing is no different than what they’d charge if they were still operating a firm with gas-powered equipment.
“We’re not asking customers to pay a premium,” Onstott said. “We’re very competitively positioned.”
“We’re not charging any more than at our previous company,” Minor said.
The two announced the founding of the firm last fall and have slowly built it since then. Today, the firm has six employees and several clients on contract, they said. They had 150 employees when they sold their last business.
“The sales cycle in our industry is long, because everybody’s on a contract,” Minor said.
Minor and Onstott are also renewing relationships after having been out of the industry for several years.
And “some people are more into sustainability than others,” Minor said. That hasn’t always resonated with prospects, but “the quiet resonates with everybody.”
Their aspirations: “We want to grow the business and scale the business,” Minor said. “It’s really to inspire the industry to move in this direction. I kind of view it as a legacy play for both of us.”
Scott Nishimura is a senior editor for the Documenters program at the Fort Worth Report. Reach him at [email protected]. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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