Including Stump Grinding in the Tree Removal Package
Marshall T. Ray — “T Ray” — offers stump grinding as part of his tree removal package because he doesn’t believe business should be left lying around for someone else to snatch up.
Ray, owner and president of the Louisville, Kentucky-based Bob Ray Co. Inc., says, for example, he recently sold a $4,700 job where stump removal and cleanup, including backfilling the site with dirt and seed, constituted 30 percent of the job.
“That’s too much money to leave lying around for other people to pick up,” Ray says. “And today, a lot of customers are more concerned about the complete package.”
In fact, the Bob Ray Co. does more than $250,000 worth of stump removal business each year as part of its commercial and residential land clearing business.
Ray’s secret is leaving nothing but footprints, he says.
“By the time we leave, we hope the only way they know we were there is that the stump is gone,” he says. “We pride ourselves in leaving the best looking turf in customers’ yards, and people pay for it because they don’t want to do it themselves.”
Ray says giving customers a complete tree removal package, including stump grinding and cleanup, is part of providing good customer service.
“You can take down the hairiest tree from over a glass house, but if you can’t clean up the stump when you’re done, you’re going to go from hero to zero,” Ray says. “If you’ve got a professional image and you can do the entire package, people will call you back every time.”
Only half of Ray’s competitors (by his estimation) offer stump removal, he says. And even those may subcontract it. Not only are they missing out on the money to be made at grinding, backfilling and seeding, but they’re also missing out on recycling the material and selling it as mulch, lumber or wood scraps.
“When you think about it, the companies who aren’t doing stump removal are not only losing money on the removal part, they’re also losing out on what they can get selling the remains,” he says. “We recycle 100 percent of the tree — every ounce is resold.”
The Bob Ray Co. typically adds 10 to 20 percent to a tree removal job to account for stump grinding and cleanup. Ray says the company charges a different hourly rate for grinding than it does for final cleanup (following the stump removal) because stump grinding itself is the “easy part.”
“One-fourth to one-third of the stump removal is actually grinding the stump. The rest is cleanup,” he says, adding that innovations in equipment are making the job easier. In fact, much has changed since he purchased his first Vermeer model in 1972. For example, Ray now owns a Vermeer SC1102A stump cutter and a Vermeer SC60TX stump cutter with AutoSweep, a patented system that monitors engine speed and automatically adjusts cutter-wheel sweep rate, maximizing engine power to the cutter-wheel. This is a feature he credits with making the job much simpler.
“It makes it easy enough for anybody to master stump grinding in a day,” he says.
The Bob Ray Co. is divided into four crews. Three handle tree and brush removal, and one handles pruning. The company has so much stump grinding work that it has one full-time employee who exclusively works on grinding and cleanup, Ray says, and “he cannot keep up there’s so much to do.”
In addition to the SC60TX model, Bob Ray Co. owns two Vermeer BC1800 brush chippers and one Vermeer BC2000 brush chipper, which equip the removal crews and pruning crew.
Established in 1960, the Bob Ray Co. has four generations of tree and property care expertise. And, since Ray took over, the company has quadrupled in size.
“We’ve just grown by leaps and bounds,” he says. “Part of that is because I want to give customers total service, and we’ve expanded our capabilities to do that.”
The company currently employs 30 hard-working experts who are all “doers,” Ray says. As he puts it: “There are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who want to make things happen and those who say, ‘what in the heck happened?’ The last two don’t fit in my company.”
The biggest stump the Bob Ray Co. has ground in its four decades of experience was from a 200-plus-year-old tree with a 12-foot-diameter base, which puts the company’s motto “no job too small, no tree too tall” into perspective.
With the right equipment and know-how, one would think Ray also takes on jobs started — but not finished — by others. But he doesn’t.
“If a customer is in a real bind because they’ve made the mistake of hiring someone they thought could do it all, but ended up only going part-way, we might help out,” Ray says. “But, I still prefer to go from start to finish.”
Ray says too many companies don’t offer good customer service these days, and he thinks that’s one of the reasons his company is so successful. “I’m just trying to offer a complete package, and that’s why we stay so busy,” he says.
Ray, owner and president of the Louisville, Kentucky-based Bob Ray Co. Inc., says, for example, he recently sold a $4,700 job where stump removal and cleanup, including backfilling the site with dirt and seed, constituted 30 percent of the job.
“That’s too much money to leave lying around for other people to pick up,” Ray says. “And today, a lot of customers are more concerned about the complete package.”
In fact, the Bob Ray Co. does more than $250,000 worth of stump removal business each year as part of its commercial and residential land clearing business.
Ray’s secret is leaving nothing but footprints, he says.
“By the time we leave, we hope the only way they know we were there is that the stump is gone,” he says. “We pride ourselves in leaving the best looking turf in customers’ yards, and people pay for it because they don’t want to do it themselves.”
Ray says giving customers a complete tree removal package, including stump grinding and cleanup, is part of providing good customer service.
“You can take down the hairiest tree from over a glass house, but if you can’t clean up the stump when you’re done, you’re going to go from hero to zero,” Ray says. “If you’ve got a professional image and you can do the entire package, people will call you back every time.”
Only half of Ray’s competitors (by his estimation) offer stump removal, he says. And even those may subcontract it. Not only are they missing out on the money to be made at grinding, backfilling and seeding, but they’re also missing out on recycling the material and selling it as mulch, lumber or wood scraps.
“When you think about it, the companies who aren’t doing stump removal are not only losing money on the removal part, they’re also losing out on what they can get selling the remains,” he says. “We recycle 100 percent of the tree — every ounce is resold.”
The Bob Ray Co. typically adds 10 to 20 percent to a tree removal job to account for stump grinding and cleanup. Ray says the company charges a different hourly rate for grinding than it does for final cleanup (following the stump removal) because stump grinding itself is the “easy part.”
“One-fourth to one-third of the stump removal is actually grinding the stump. The rest is cleanup,” he says, adding that innovations in equipment are making the job easier. In fact, much has changed since he purchased his first Vermeer model in 1972. For example, Ray now owns a Vermeer SC1102A stump cutter and a Vermeer SC60TX stump cutter with AutoSweep, a patented system that monitors engine speed and automatically adjusts cutter-wheel sweep rate, maximizing engine power to the cutter-wheel. This is a feature he credits with making the job much simpler.
“It makes it easy enough for anybody to master stump grinding in a day,” he says.
The Bob Ray Co. is divided into four crews. Three handle tree and brush removal, and one handles pruning. The company has so much stump grinding work that it has one full-time employee who exclusively works on grinding and cleanup, Ray says, and “he cannot keep up there’s so much to do.”
In addition to the SC60TX model, Bob Ray Co. owns two Vermeer BC1800 brush chippers and one Vermeer BC2000 brush chipper, which equip the removal crews and pruning crew.
Established in 1960, the Bob Ray Co. has four generations of tree and property care expertise. And, since Ray took over, the company has quadrupled in size.
“We’ve just grown by leaps and bounds,” he says. “Part of that is because I want to give customers total service, and we’ve expanded our capabilities to do that.”
The company currently employs 30 hard-working experts who are all “doers,” Ray says. As he puts it: “There are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who want to make things happen and those who say, ‘what in the heck happened?’ The last two don’t fit in my company.”
The biggest stump the Bob Ray Co. has ground in its four decades of experience was from a 200-plus-year-old tree with a 12-foot-diameter base, which puts the company’s motto “no job too small, no tree too tall” into perspective.
With the right equipment and know-how, one would think Ray also takes on jobs started — but not finished — by others. But he doesn’t.
“If a customer is in a real bind because they’ve made the mistake of hiring someone they thought could do it all, but ended up only going part-way, we might help out,” Ray says. “But, I still prefer to go from start to finish.”
Ray says too many companies don’t offer good customer service these days, and he thinks that’s one of the reasons his company is so successful. “I’m just trying to offer a complete package, and that’s why we stay so busy,” he says.
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