EQUIPMENT INDUSTRY in^a^agrlemen" Lawn manufacturers association formed Textron, Inc., Providence, R.I. last month signed an agreement in principle with Allegheny Ludlum Industries to purchase Jacobsen Manufacturing Co., Racine, Wis. In an official release to Jacob-sen employes, Jacobsen presi-dent Frank S. Depew said the company's management team was expected to remain largely intact. The agreement was expected to be finalized late last month or early this month. Textron also owns E-Z-Go Golf Car, Augusta, Ga. Representatives of the lawn and garden industry have formed a new, industry-wide Lawn and Garden Manufac-turers Association with head-quarters in Chicago and ad-ditional offices in Washington. Announcement was made by C. Edward Scofield, first LAGMA president. Scofield is executive vice-president of the RA-PID-GRO Corp., Dansville, N.Y. "For the first time, various segments of the diversified multi-billion-dollar lawn and garden industry have been brought together into one affilia-tion/' said Scofield. "Our pri-mary objective is to establish a cohesive force that will further the growth of the vast lawn and garden industry." Last month an invitation went out to more than 2,000 lawn and garden manufacturers inviting them to an introductory meeting of the association. The meeting will be held June 19-20 in Chi-cago, at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare Hotel. There will be a director's reception beginning at 6:30 p.m., June 19. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 
June 20, speakers will give an 
industry perspective of the 
association, a trade press perspective, the definition and VARIETIES U.S. patent issued for new Kentucky bluegrass United States patent No. 4165 has been issued for Birka Ken-tucky bluegrass, according to Bob Peterson, vice president of E. F. Burlingham & Sons, Forest 
Grove, Ore. The company has the exclusive U.S. rights for pro-duction and marketing. Peterson describes Birka as a Kentucky bluegrass that has con-
sistently proven its ability to maintain an attractive appear-ance under low maintenance conditions throughout eight years of testing under research conditions in the U.S. and Canada. "Birka's characteristics make it ideal for home lawns, golf 
courses, athletic fields, or any area which demands a combina-tion of hardiness and good looks," Peterson told LAWN CARE INDUSTRY. Birka is cur-rently in production and ade-quate seed supplies are avail-
able. It is included on the recom-mended list for Maryland and Virginia. For further information, con-tact Peterson at P.O. Box 217, Forest Grove, Ore. 97116, or call (503) 357-2141. WWN J jM Serving lawn maintenance Ł J^Mm^J^mm and chemical lawn ^^ J^Tel^^ [ care professionals. INDUSTRY JUNE 1978 Ł VOL. 2, NO. 6 Ł A Harvest Publication scope of the industry will be dis-
cussed, and long-range and three-year plans will be dis-cussed by Sanford J. Hill, execu-tive director. Some charter members in-clude Nursery Specialty Prod-ucts, Seaboard Seed Co., Hess-ton Manufacturing, Melnor 
Industries and Plant Marvel. Association headquarters are: 111 E. Wacker Dr., Chicago, 
111. 60601. Phone is (312) 644-6610. Association vice-president E. Olshansky, president of Science Products Co., Inc., Chicago, said that interest in the association has already attracted numerous company members, representing 
a broad spectrum of the industry. Appropriate working com-mittees have been appointed. Along with president Sco-field, three additional asso-ciation officers were announced: vice-president, E. Olshansky; treasurer, W. R. Barrett, general 
manager, Phillips Products Co., 
Inc., Streamwood, 111.; and secre-tary, Jane McAlpine, lawn and garden sales coordinator, Countryside Books, Barrington, 111. Nine industry members com-
prise the charter board of direc-tors. Named to manage the admini-strative affairs of the association was Smith, Bucklin and Associ-
ates. BHHHHHHHi Do you employ an agronomist? BUSINESS Lawn care companies across country get late work start due to weather Source: 1977 LCI survey QUICK STARTS Shorthand turf disease identification page 5 Kansas City's Suburban Lawn & Garden page 6 Bank loans: what kind of collateral? page 9 Chicago's McGinty Brothers: 26 years in business page 10 
Small town lawn care page 10 Radio-dispatched lawn maintenance? page 9 MEMOS 2 MEETING DATES 4 MONEYWISE 8 
NEWSMAKERS 8 COST CUTTINGS 9 TOOLS, TIPS & TECHNIQUES 10 
MARKETING IDEA FILE 10 PRODUCT 20 For p rnmnloto marirot cHirJt/ nf *v»r» io**»« g industry in Cleveland, a continuing series of in-. i i : *iZ i W HQ--r] I ; : . ' ' j * .the lawn care business AIM 31VIS NV91HDII* city, potential lawn care 1 i t j e there and how they go a a A late, cold, wet spring Š coming on the heels of one of the most severe winters in history Š mtmmmmmmm REGULATION Mower safety standards to come by year's end A spokesman for the Con-sumer Products Safety Com-mission in Washington said the CPSC has received more than 100 comments on its proposed mower safety standardsŠ"a fair portion of them negative." The CPSC staff is evaluating these comments, and its techni-cal staff is working up data to be released later this month or early in July. The Commission is not expected, however, to decide on the standards until at least November. The Outdoor Power Equip-ment Institute and its vice presi-dent David T. McLaughlin recen-tly urged that any CPSC manda-tory standard avoid restrictive design requirements, and that performance requirements be adopted which would allow manufacturers to develop new technological approaches to protecting users of power lawn mowers (see "Innovative Safety Standards Sought by Mower Manufacturers," LAWN CARE INDUSTRY, May, page 1). 
McLaughlin is chairman of Toro Co., Minneapolis, Minn. put many lawn care business-men behind the eight ball as they 
attempted to schedule their men and trucks on customer lawns for the first work of the 1978 lawn care season. Reports from across the coun-try have indicated that many companies are still playing "catch-up" from the late start 
they got due to the weather. "We had all of our help hired and equipment ready to go by the 
end of February," one midwest-
ern lawn care businessman recently told LAWN CARE 
INDUSTRY. "Then we got the bad weather, it even snowed here in April. Then the first nice week we had every customer called and wanted us on their lawn 'now/ " Frank McGarvin, owner of Terra Green Lawn Corp., Floris-sant (St. Louis), Mo. reported: "The weather has really hurt us. We are a service business, and if we can't service our accounts, where are we?" John Craigie, 
vice president of sales and marketing for Sears Lawn & Leaf, Wheeling (Chicago), 111. reported: "All of us in this market have had weather prob-lems. We are all playing catch-up." John Pendleton, owner of A AA Aerifying Service, South Euclid (Cleveland), Ohio re-
ported: "I've got a backlog of jobs with standing water on them. When the weather breaks, I'm really going to be working." u X D oz H 
CO D 
Q Z w K < u Z < ASSOCIATIONS Washington landscapers affiliate with ALCA The Landscape Contractors Association of Metropolitan Washington (LCAMW) has es-tablished formal affiliation with the Associated Landscape Con-tractors of America (ALCA), by becoming a sponsoring member of the national group. Announce-ment of the affiliation comes af-ter formal approval by the Board of Directors of both organiza-tions. LCAMW, headquartered in suburban Reston, Virginia, 
becomes the fourth state/regional group to affiliate with ALCA, following California, Illinois, and Colorado. The sponsoring member cate-gory is the means by which state or regional organizations may es-tablish a formal relationship with ALCA, while maintaining 
its own independence, and is Ohio planners. Dick Warner (left) and Dr. David Martin are currently planning the 1978 Ohio Turfgrass Con-ference to be held Dec. 5-7 in Columbus. Warner is with O.M. Scott & Sons, Marysville, Ohio, and Mar-tin is turf professor at Ohio State University, and ex-ecutive secretary of the Ohio Turfgrass Foundation. There will be three days of lawn care sessions at the conference. formally set forth in the ALCA bylaws. Under the affiliation arrange-ment, all ALCA publications will be sent to LCAMW, for repro-
duction and distribution to LCAMW members. Additionally, 
LCAMW members will be able to attend all ALCA meetings and seminars at the member fee, and will be able to purchase ad-ditional copies of ALCA publica-tions at the member price. LCAMW President J. Landon Reeve IV (of Chapel Valley Nur-sery Company, Woodbine, Mary-land) expressed the group's desire to see the affiliation 
become a meaningful tool to 
bring more and better services to the LCAMW member contractor. ALCA President Ron Ahlman also praised the move, stating "We are very pleased to have the Washington area organization as our fourth Sponsoring Member, and both LCAMW and ALCA should benefit from the arrangement." L4WN OIRE INDUSTRY Publisher: HUGH CHRONISTER General Manager: RICHARD J. W. FOSTER Executive and editorial offices: 9800 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44102 Editor: ROBERT EARLEY Executive Editor: DAVID SLAYBAUGH Associate Editor: BRUCE SHANK Technical Editor: RON MORRIS Assistant Editors: SCOTT SCREDON, MIKE CASEY Graphic Director: RAYMOND GIBSON Circulation Manager: JACK SCHABEL Research Services: CLARENCE ARNOLD Advertising Production Manager: PATRICIA KELLEY MARKETING/SALES Advertising Director: STEVE STONE (212) 421-1350 757 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 Circulation & List Rental: TERRI HUTSENPILLER (216) 651-5500 Marketing & Merchandising Services: FRAN FRANZAK (216) 651-5500 Midwest Office: JOE GUARISE (312) 236-9425 333 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60601 Southern Office: DICK GORE (404) 252-4311 3186 Frontenac Court, N.E., Atlanta, Ga. 30319 Southwest Office: JOHN SANDFORD (213) 933-8408 5455 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1107, Los Angeles, Ca. 90036 Northwest Office: BOB MIEROW (415) 982-0110 582 Market St., Suite 1904, San Francisco, Ca. 94104 Classified: DOROTHY LOWE (216) 651-5500 9800 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44102 LAWN CARE INDUSTRY is published every month by The Harvest Publishing Company, a subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. at 9800 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44102 (216) 651-5500. Copyright © 1978 by The Harvest Publishing Company, all rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced either in whole or in part without consent of copyright owner. Controlled circulation postage paid at Cleveland, Ohio. SUBSCRIPTIONS: to Lawn Care Industry are solicited only from owners, managers, operators, buyers, merchandisers, agronomists, technicians, dealers, 
distributors and manufacturers of products associated with the lawn care and maintenance business. Position ana company connection must be indicated on subscription orders. Publisher reserves tne right to approve all subscription re-quests. Single copy cost $1.00 for current issue. All back issues $1.25 each. Foreign $1.25. Subscription rates: $10.00 one year, $18.00 two years, $23.00 three years. Group and foreign air mail rates available on request. SUBSCRIBERS: Send chance-of-address notices, correspondence regarding subscription service to Fulfillment Manager, Lawn Care Industry, 9800 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44102. Change of Address notices should be sent pro-mptly, provide old as well as new address, attach address label from recent issue. Please allow one month for change of address to become effective. POSTMASTER: Please send form 3579 to Fulfillment Manager, Lawn Care In-dustry, 9800 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44102. The Harvest Publishing Company, a subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., publishers of WEEDS TREES & TURF, PEST CONTROL, NPCA Extra, GOLF BUSINESS and the Scientific Guide to Pest Control Operations. MEMOS Merion bluegrass birthday: The Merion Bluegrass Associ-ation will celebrate a silver anniversary at its annual meet-ing the 15th and 16th of this month at the Red Lion Inn in Spo-kane, Wash. "Merion Kentucky bluegrass was the forerunner of a trend in the production and utilization of specialized turf-grasses and has an enviable record of success," Richard H. Bailey recently told LAWN CARE INDUSTRY. He is presi-
dent and general manager of Turf-Seed, Inc., Hubbard, Ore., and also president of the Association. He said that the 
distribution of Merion Kentucky bluegrass has been unique, with seed growers in the West forming the Association to fund a consumer and dealer oriented promotion program to aid in sales of Merion seed. Sod producers to Spokane: The scenic Pacific Northwest is waiting to welcome the American Sod Producers Associ-
ation Summer Convention and Field Days in July, according to president Glenn Rehbein of Lino Lakes, Minn. Named as convention chairman is Doyle Jacklin, marketing manager for Jacklin Seed Co., Dishman, Wash. "This will be the first time ever the event has been held in the Northwest and in a seed production area," Rehbein said. 
He said that between 350 and 400 sod producers and sup-pliers will be attending the July 19-21 event headquartered at 
the Sheraton-Spokane Hotel. Successful seminars: A number of different series of lawn care and turf seminars put on by some of the major compa-nies in the industry this past year have had some very help-ful and positive effects on the industry. Companies like Swift Agricultural Chemicals Corp., Win-ter Haven, Fla., O.M. Scott & Sons, Marysville, Ohio, Her-
cules, Inc., Wilmington, Del., Northrup King Co., Min-neapolis, and many other have been touring the country and 
providing much useful information for fledgling lawn care businessmen just starting out and some of the old-timers in the industry too. The seminars have allowed company experts to share their information with lawn care businessmen, and also bring 
tips from other parts of the country. It has been a chance for lawn care businessmen in any given region to meet one another and compare notes (although if two lawn care 
businessmen are working in the same area, you might not find too much note-comparing going on, although even this 
attitude is changing). The seminars and get-togethers have also done a great deal to help identify the lawn care industry and single it out as a very real industry with specific needs and demands. And, of course, the seminars have turned up a lot of prospects who might just be in the market for a bag or two of fertilizer or seed, or chemicals or equipment. Com-panies are scheduling more of these seminars this year and early next, keep on the lookout for them. More $20,000 households: Many lawn care businessmen across the country have reported that their prime customer has a household income hovering just below or just above the $20,000 mark. The number of households earning over $20,000 in the future is projected to increase dramatically, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce Š even in uninflated 1975 dol-lars. Commerce figures show that 26 percent of households had an income of $20,000 or more in 1975. By 1980, this figure will be up to 38 percent; by 1985, 45 percent; and by 1990, a whopping 56 percent. More than half, and remember, this is in uninflated dollars based on 1975 figures. Hartyl Lucks retires: Hartyl Lucks, one of the people responsible for building the ChemLawn Corp. business and tradition, retired from the company earlier this year. He joined ChemLawn in 1970 for what was to be a two-year term of activity. He was induced out of previous retirement by 
company founder Dick Duke and Dick Copeland, present company vice president of finance. Lucks was responsible for being the first person to apply 2-4,D in the dry form in conjunction with fertilizer in 1948, the first commercial application in the turf industry using the combined weed-feed principle. Virginia turf research: The establishment of the Southern Piedmont Research and Continuing Education Center at Blackstone, Va. has provided an opportunity to conduct turf-grass field research in the warmer environment of the state. The turf research staff at Blackstone and Blacksburg, in co-operation with the Virginia Turfgrass Council, sought and 
received a $10,000 grant-in-aid from the Virginia Agricul-tural Foundation to develop turf research facilities at this location. Recently, the Turf and Garden Division of Todd 
Farm Equipment, Inc., in conjunction with Rain Bird, donated over $3,000 worth of irrigation equipment to the facility. For ad on following page circle 103 on free information card | TURF Disease identification guide is available A practical turf disease identification guide for on-site use by lawn care businessmen and other turf managers is now available. The manual, entitled A Turf Manager's Guide Š Micro-scopic Identification of Common Turfgrass Parthogens, deals chiefly with the microscopic features of the fungi which cause turfgrass diseases and how to recognize them. It was written by Patricia O'Connor Sanders, research assistant in the Depart-ment of Plant Pathology at Penn-sylvania State University. It is available for $5 to mem-bers of the Pennsylvania Turf-grass Council, and for $10 for non-members. For more information, write: PTC, 20 Tyson Building, University Park, Pa. 16802. HERBICIDES Morton-Norwich agrees to produce Elanco's Spike Elanco Products Co., Indian-apolis, and Morton-Norwich Pro-ducts, Inc., have entered into an agreement in which Morton-Norwich will produce tebu-thiuron, a chemical sold to the green industry under the trade name Spike. Tebuthiuron will be pro-duced in a $17 million manufac-turing facility now under con-struction at Week's Island, Louisiana. The new plant is 
scheduled to be on-stream in mid-1979. According to Elanco presi-dent James Lake, "The agree-ment was needed to assure an adequate supply of tebuthiuron in anticipation of growth in our tebuthiuron-containing products by the early 1980's." Spike is 
already widely used in control-ling unwanted vegetation along 
railroad rights-of-way, and is gaining a place in utility and in-dustrial sites for weed control. BUSINESS Cinci's Thornton begins a maintenance division Gary Thornton, president of Thornton Landscape, Inc., Cin-cinnati, Ohio has announced the development of a maintenance division. Thornton Environ-mental Management (T.E.M.) ties in the already established Spray-A-Lawn fertilizing divi-sion and the landscaping divi-
sion. Filling a void in the land-scape maintenance industry, T.E.M. increases the residential and commercial investment and insures the cultivation of the 
landscape as it was designed. According to Thornton, the total maintenance program of professional care was primarily developed to free the time of commercial property managers who do not have the extensive experience in maintaining a landscape. The initial costs and upkeep of necessary equipment is another prohibitive factor in 
both small and large landscapes. Expensive employee down-time 
from typical maintenance responbilities becomes elimi-nated by working with T.E.M.'s professionals, particularly dur-ing seasonal changes in horti-
culture. T.E.M. provides both plant and lawn care maintenance. 
Pruning, fertilizing, insect and disease control and edging plant 
beds are just some of the plant care provided. Lawn care, from mowing to preventative weed control, highlight this program. Even litter problems of commer-cial areas are taken care of in the comprehensive maintenance program. Drew Todd, salesman for T.E.M. and a landscape horti-culturist previously with the U.S. 
Forest Service,notes pruning and insect and weed control will be a part of any T.E.M. total program. Frank Depew (left) president of Jacobsen Manufacturing Co., Racine, Wis., presents the 1977 California Turf Equipment Top Volume Award to Ray McMicken (centerJ president of B. Hayman Co. At right is Howard McPherson, vice president and general manager of Jacobsen's Turf Pro-ducts Division. The B. Hayman Co., with four locations, has won the award four times, making it one of the top U.S. distributors for Jacobsen products. Will Treat 1000 Square Feet of liirf for Around Half a Buck. That's less money than most other turf insecticides. In most cases, a lot less. And it lasts a lot longer, too. So if you have a lot of area to cover, go with the proven performance of DURSBAN* 2E Insecticide and the double-strength formulation DURSBAN 4E Insecticide. They're the effective, economical way to do away with common turf pests. You see, DURSBAN Insecticides are carefully formulated to provide broad spectrum, multi-purpose control of cut-worms, chinchbugs, sod webworms and numerous other turf pests, plus ornamental plant pests and mosquitos. They kill turf pests two ways: by contact and ingestion. DOW CHEMICAL U.S.A. And DURSBAN Insecticides give unsurpassed residual control of all surface turf insects. Which means they work longer. And that saves you time, saves you trips. And that's money to you. Add up the benefits and you'll see why the pros in the industry choose DURSBAN 2E and double-strength DURSBAN 4E Insecticides two-to-one over the nearest competitor. Make DURSBAN Insecticides part of your turf program. Just be sure to read and follow all label directions and precautions. Agricultural Products Department, Midland, 
Ml 48640. ŁTrademark of The Dow Chemical Company w Z D >< oc H C/3 D D Z w Dm < u z < J MEETING DATES Oregon Seed Trade Association Meeting, Bend, Ore., June 11-13. Contact: Margaret Herbst, 101 Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017, 212-685-5917. Northern California Turfgrass Council Field Day, Fairfield-Suisun Waster Water Treatment Plant and Warren's Turf Nursery, June 14. Contact: Marilyn Heinrichs, P.O. Box 268, Lafayette, Calif. 94549. Merior. Bluegrass Association Annual Meeting, Red Lion Inn, Spokane, Wash., June 15-16. Con-tact: Arnie Bonnicksen, 12341 25th N.E., Seattle, Wash. 98125, 206-365-7548. Lofts Field Day, Lofts Research Plots, Martinsville, N.J., June 21. Contact: Kama Sapp, Loft Pedi-greed Seed, Inc., P.O. Box 146, Bound Brook, N.J. 08805, 201-359-1100. American Sod Producers Association Summer Convention and Field Days, Sheraton-Spokane, Spokane, Wash., July 19-21. Contact: Bob Garey, ASPA, Association Building, 9th and Minnesota, Hastings, Neb. 68901, 402-463-5691. Missouri Turf Field Day, University of Missouri South Farms, Columbia, July 25. Contact: Dr. John H. Dunn, 1-43 Agriculture Building, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo. 65211, 314-882-7838. Penn Allied Nursery Trade Show, Hershey Convention Center, Hershey, Pa., July 25-27. Contact: PNA, Inc., 169 W. High St., Carlisle, Pa. 17013, 717-243-1786. University of Massachusetts Turfgrass Field Day, University Farm, South Deerfield, July 26. Con-tact: Dr. Joseph Troll, Stockbridge Hall, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. 01003, 413-545-2353. Illinois Landscape Contractors Association Annual Summer Field Day, Stonegate Farm Nursery, Poplar Grove, 111., Aug. 2. Contact: Carole Rachesky, Box 484, Bloomingdale, 111. 60108, 312-894-4774. Lawn, Garden, Outdoor Living Show, Division of National Hardware Show, McCormick Place, Chicago, Aug. 14-17. Contact: Charles Snitow, National Hardware Show, Inc., 331 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017, 212-682-4802. Central Plains Turfgrass Association/Kansas State University Field Day, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan., Aug. 23. Contact: Dr. Robert N. Carrow, Horticulture Department, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan. 66506, 913-532-6170. Farwest Nursery Garden and Supply Show, Memorial Coliseum, Portland, Ore., Aug. 25-27. Con-tact: Carl Plog, Farwest Nursery Snow, 224 S. W. Hamilton St., Portland, Ore. 97201, 503-221-1182. Ohio Turf and Landscape Day, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Wooster, Ohio, Sept. 12. Contact: Edward H. Roche, OARDC, Wooster, Ohio 44691, 216-264-1021. Virginia Turfgrass Field Days and Trade Show, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univer-sity, Blacksburg, Va., Sept. 12-14. Contact: Dr. John F. Shoulders, Department of Agronomy, 419 Smyth Hall, VPI, Blacksburg, Va. 24061, 703-951-5797. International Pesticide Applicators Association Annual Convention, Sea-Tac Motor Inn, 18740 Pacific Highway South, Seattle, Wash., Sept. 13-15. Contact: Ed Walters, 20057 Ballinger Rd., N.E., Seattle, Wash. 98155, 206-362-9100. Pacific Horticultural Trade Show, Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, Calif., Sept. 20-22. Contact: Richard Staples, 1005 8th St., Suite 303, Sacramento, Calif. 95814, 916-443-7373. Midwest Turf Field Day, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., Sept. 25. Contact: Dr. William H. Daniel, Department of Agronomy, Purdue University, 2-443 Lilly Hall, West Lafayette, Ind. 47907, 317-749-2891. Northwest Turfgrass Conference, Holiday Inn, Richland, Wash., Sept. 25-28. Contact: Dr. Roy L. Goss, Western Washington Research and Extension Center, Puyallup, Wash. 98371, 206-845-6613. Fourth Annual Garden Industry of America Conference and Trade Show, Cincinnati Convention and Exposition Center, Sept. 29-Oct. 1. Contact: Paul Anderson, GIA, Box 1092, Minneapolis, Minn. 55440, 612-374-5200. Northern California Turfgrass Council Irrigation Seminar, Goodman Hall, Jack London Square, Oakland, Calif., Oct. 4. Contact: Richard Harrison, Room 201, City Hall, Alameda, Calif. 94501. Central Plains Turfgrass Conference, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan., Oct. 4-6. Contact: Dr. Robert N. Carrow, Horticulture Department, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan. 66506, 913-532-6170. Professional Grounds Management Society Conference and Trade Show, Atkinson Hotel, In-dianapolis, Ind., Oct. 8-11. Contact: Allan Shulder, 19 Hawthorne Ave., Pikesville, Md. 21208, 301-653-2742. 18th Annual Southern California Turf/Landscape Equipment and Materials Educational Exposi-tion, Orange County Fairgrounds, Costa Mesa, Calif., Oct. 18-19. Contact: Ed McNeill, SCTC, 1000 Concha St., Altadena, Calif. 91001, 213-798-1715. Southwest Turfgrass Conference, Texas A & M University, Research Center at El Paso, Oct. 19-20. Contact: Dr. Arden A. Baltensperger, Agronomy Department, Box 3Q, New Mexico State Univer-sity, Las Cruces, N.M. 88003. Florida Nursery and Allied Trades Show, Curtis Hixon Convention Center, Tampa, Fla., Oct. 27-29. Contact: FNATS, Inc., 6535 E. Hillsborough Ave., Tampa, Fla. 33600, 813-626-4149. Eighth National Institute on Park and Grounds Management, Regency Inn, Denver, Colo., Oct. 29-Nov. 2. Contact: National Institute, Box 1936, Appleton, Wis. 54911, 414-733-2301. COMPANIES Ag-Chem Equipment Co. opens new parts center Ag-Chem Equipment Co., Inc., a manufacturer of sprayers, spreaders and accessories, an-nounces the opening of a new parts center in Lebanon, Indiana. The company is based in Minne-apolis. The new facility stocks the company's line of sprayers and accessories such as pumps, noz-zles, tips, strainers, hose, clamps, etc. For more information, contact the facility at 320 South Ballard, Lebanon, Ind. 46052, or call (317) 482-7400. SUPPLIERS Cushman honors 40 turf dealers Forty turf equipment dealer-ships across the country re-cently were honored by Cush-man, Lincoln, Neb., for surpass-ing quota marks in sales. Daniel L. Hedglin, national sales manager, presented awards to the following dealerships: The Magovern Company, Inc., Wind-sor Locks, Conn.; Wilfred Mac Donald Inc., Clifton, N.J.; Mal-vese Mowers & Equipment Co., Hicksville, N.Y.; Rhodes Mobile Equipment Co., Southampton, Pa.; Porter Brothers, Inc., Shelby, N.C. Krigger and Company, Inc., Pittsburgh; DeBra Turf & Indus-trial Equipment, Hollywood, Fla.; Bob Ladd & Associates, Inc., Memphis; Tennessee Electric Motor Co., Nashville; Zaun Equipment, Inc.'s Florida out-lets in St. Petersburg, Orlando and Jacksonville. Ellis Sales, Inc., Kalamazoo, and Spartan Distributors, Inc., Sparta, both in Michigan; Moon Equipment Company, Cincin-nati; Howard's Sales, Inc., 
Columbus, and Baker Vehicle Systems, Inc., Macedonia, both in Ohio; Illinois Lawn Equip-ment, Inc., Orland Park, 111.; Duke Lawn Equipment Ltd., Bur-lington, Ontario. Little Wheels, Ltd., Iowa City, Iowa; Fox Vehicles, St. Louis; Horst Distributing, Inc., Chilton, Reinders Turf Equipment, Elm Grove, and Wisconsin Turf 
Equipment Corp., Janesville, all in Wisconsin; Boyd Martin Com-pany's offices in Salt Lake City and Boise, Idaho; Capital Equip-ment Company, Alexander, Ark.; Sunset Northwest, Bellevue, Wash. Robison's Lawn & Golf, Inc., Grandview, Mo.; Justice Golf Car Company, Inc., Oklahoma City; Huber Sales, Inc., Phoenix; Southern Specialty Sales Com-pany, Inc., New Orleans; Watson Distributing Company, Inc.'s out-lets in Dallas and Houston; Toro Pacific Distributing S.F., Burl-ingame, and Cushman Motor Sales, Inc., Santa Fe Springs, both in California; Inter Island Equipment, Inc., Waipahu, Hawaii; Baltz & Son Company, Portland, Ore.; Morin Equip-ment Ltd., Ste. Foy, Quebec. SUPPLIERS Top 10 dealer list announced by Massey The top 10 independent dealers of Massey-Ferguson pro-ducts in the U.S. have been recognized by the company. Selection to MF's annual "Top 10" list is based on sales of the company's lawn and garden trac-tors during the previous year. The following dealerships made this year's 'Top 10" list: (1) Lawn Care of Penn, Martinsdale, Pa; (2) Stark Equipment Company, North Canton, Ohio; (3) Parrish Imple-ment Company Inc., Louisville, Ken.; (4) Pedersen Brothers Im-
plement Co., Antioch, 111.; (5) Dicus Farm Supply Inc., Hanover, Ind.; (6) R & R Equip-ment Service Inc., Swansea, Mass. (7) Meyers Implement Inc., Greencastle, Pa.; (8) Seibel Brothers, Inc., Roanoke, Va.; (9) Westenbarger & Sons, Inc., Mt. 
Vernon, Ohio; (10) Braun Imple-ment, Bridgewater, Mich. COMPANIES Conwed Corp. begins hydro mulch fiber plant F. T. Weyerhaeuser, presi-dent, Conwed Corporation, St. Paul, Minn., announced con-struction of a new wood fiber mulch plant to be located in Hickory, NC. The plant will pro-
duce Conwed Hydro Mulch 
products used in hydraulic mulching for turf establishment. Construction will begin in mid-1978 with production scheduled for early 1979. Weyerhaeuser stated demand for the Hydro Mulch product has 
reached the point where produc-tion at the Cloquet, Minn, manu-facturing facility is nearing capacity. The North Carolina site was selected to meet this increas-ing demand and to better serve the product's growing market in the eastern United States. Conwed mulch products are used extensively for turf estab-
lishment with the hydraulic mulching process. TURF A shorthand way to identify turf disease Turf specialists at the Univer-sity of Maryland have published a "Key to Turf Diseases" that can be used as a quick, rule-of-thumb guide to distribute to your customers or provide training for 
your staff. There are four basic ways to identify disease Š if the fungus growth can be seen, if leaf spots are present, if the infected areas are circular, or if the infected areas are irregular in shape. Fungus growth can be seen. If there are black, elongated pus-tules, it is probably stripe smut; if it is white, it is probably pow-dery mildew; if there are red or orange pustules, it is a rust dis-
ease; if there are gray pustules that are easily rubbed off, it is slime mold. Leaf spots present. If they are blue-black and elongated, it is leaf spot; if they are straw-colored with a brown border, it is dollar spot. Infected areas circular. If it occurs in mid-winter, it is snow mold. If it occurs in spring, summer or fall with a size of one inch to four feet or more in diameter and mushrooms occurring within a circle, it is fairy ring. If there are no mushrooms, it is brown 
patch. If it occurs in spring, summer or fall and the size is one to four inches in diameter it is dollar spot if the symptoms are through-
out the turf; Fusarium blight if the syumptoms are only evident in full sun; and Pythium if the symptoms occur in streaks in low areas. Infected areas irregular in shape. If the seedlings are affec-ted and wilt and die, it is damp-ing-off; if mature plants are af-
fected, it is melting-out. Right before their eyes, Du Pont sales representative, Pat Nelsen, and Larl Shafer, superintendent of the Nemours Golf Course at Wilmington Del., watch a "Tersan" 1991 water-soluble package dissolve. In just a mat-ter of minutes, the convenient package goes into solution; and without any direct user-exposure to the fungicide from measuring and handling.Users and applicators of the new soluble package of Tersan 1991 fungicide will find each1.5 pound bag contains three V2 pound soluble packets, ready to drop m the spray tank. According to Du Pont, lawn care companies will find auantities of the soluble package limited this season mends use of Tersan 1991 in combination with a contact I * . . i / J Ł Ł I V* 1 11 Ł vnt recom-[icide for the Fusarium blight and stripe smut. GSL Sulfate of Potash (0-0-52-18) With GSL Sulfate of Potash, there is far less chance of burning lawns or gardens. GSL Sulfate of Potash is nearly free of chloride and has the lowest salt index of any potash. (0.85 vs. 1.94 for potassium chloride.) It is the safest potash you can buy. Because GSL Sulfate of Potash contains 18% sulfur, you get better disease resistance to Fusarium Patch, Ophiobolus Patch, Dollar Spot Fungus and Powdery Mildew. You also get less Poa Annua infesting your lawns. GSL Sulfate of Potash contains both K and S in the ratio used by grasses. This results in a better response to the nitrogen, phosphate and other nutrients you apply. Let GSL Sulfate of Potash help you keep customers satisfied, increase repeat business and add to your profits. GSL makes several grades of Sulfate of Potash for solutions, granulated, blended or suspension products. Call or write for complete agronomic information. fiSL Great Salt Lake Minerals & Chemicals Corp. P.O. Box 1190 Ogden, Utah 84402 Ł (801) 731-3100 Western Office: P.O. Box 14761 Spokane, Wa. 99214 Ł (509) 928-2747 Eastern Office: P.O. Box 29695 Richmond, Va. 23229 Ł (804) 288-2996 Northeast Office: 880 Rosedale Ave., Marion, Oh. 43302 Ł (614) 382-5304 A subsidiary of Gulf Resources & Chemical Corporation Ł Houston 00 s W 2 D >« oc H CO D O Z w a: < U z £ < Kansas City lawn care businessman suggests ways of stopping those employment headaches After three years managing one of the largest lawn care oper-ations in greater Kansas City, 26-year-old Jim Haas knows one thing for sure Š the pro-curement, training, handling and keeping of employes is the biggest single problem con-fronting the lawn care industry today. It's a baffling, grade A migraine headache that must be 
dealt with continually, intelli-gently and with a good measure of open-mindedness, he believes. And a sense of humor 
doesn't hurt. Lick this one and you've taken a giant stride toward making it in the business. Even holding your own is a major triumph, he 
believes. So what has Jim Haas learned in coping with the labor situa-tion? "I've learned," says the young man at the helm of the mainte-
nance department at Suburban Lawn & Garden, in Overland Park, Kansas, "it pays to keep 
scouring the trade magazines and to pick brains of people at 
conventions, employment agen-cies, supply houses Š every-body Š for ideas. Even to bend an ear to customers and com-petitors offering counsel." A graduate of Kansas State University, Jim Haas pushed mowers for Suburban through his high school years and decided to make a career in the industry. He started five years ago with the company as a super-visor and then on to the top posi-tion. Bill Stueck, a workaholic, is the owner of the company. It started as a lawn-mowing enter-prise and grew to encompass a landscaping department, green-house, 24-acre growing area, and a sprawling garden center that has realized stunning growth. All in all, it stacks up as one of the most diversified operations 
of its kind in the area, employing 
some 160 to 170 employees in-cluding an average of 60 em-ployees in the lawn maintenance 
department. In season, this 
department will have 20 crews fanning out over the greater Kansas City area. This past season, the firm ser-ved 150 homeowner customers, who spent a minimum of $1,000 with the company, and a good-
sized mix of commercial ac-counts, some of them the most prestigious in the area. To name 
one: Marion Laboratories, a pro-sperous pharmaceutical com-pany, with 16 showplace acres of ground. In numbers, the residential jobs overshadow the com-mercial facet. But in dollar revenue, the commercial aspect packs the bigger gun. To toss off a few figures, Suburban mowed 
and trimmed 3.6 million square feet of ground last year and fer-tilized and applied herbicide to an additional 2.8 million square feet. In equipment, the firm is geared to tackle just about every-thing. Included in the line-up are 65 vehicles ranging from Pinto station wagons to semi-tractor trailers. Also, 35 Lawn Boy mowers and five Hesston riding 
mowers and six power rakes plus 
a couple of spray rigs, a fleet of tractors and much small equip-ment. Watchwords here are service, personal contact and quality. Stueck, the top man, and Jim 
Haas aren't ivory tower types. Not infrequently both men get out and work alongside the plan-ters, the mowers, the seeders and the sodders. When rain delayed sodding a lawn for a bank, and opening ceremonies loomed perilously 
near, Stueck and Haas pitched in with the two supervisors, six crew chiefs and laid sod until the project was completed at 10 P.M. "That's customer service," believes Jim Haas, "but it is more than that. It's setting an example for your employees. If manage-
ment isn't willing to work up a 
little sweat now and then you'll 
find your employees won't put 
out either. "Another area of customer service focuses on estimating," 
he added. "Our estimates stick even if we get hit by a rising cost 
factor we didn't count on. We don't call the customer and ask him to pay a little more and help cover us." Like other companies, the ob-jective here is to maintain a nucleus of skilled people throughout the year. To do this, you must find outlets for their services in the winter. Holding 
the two supervisors, six crew chiefs and a core of other em-
ployees with special skills in various areas is a big goal. Snow removal is one answer to keeping these people busy but it often is not dependable. Also, there are always construction projects on the company's site to engage five or six employees. Bill Stueck Bo Stueck And there is always electrical, plumbing and mechanical ser-vice on automatic sprinkling systems to occupy other person-nel. This year the firm experi-mented with an innovative pro-ject designed to take up some of salary slack of the maintenance nucleus. A single-family dwell-ing was erected with labor com-posed entirely of members of 
lawn maintenance crews. The i -Jim Haas profit from the pre-fabricated, paneled house, which will be sold in the spring, is expected to help offset the expense of holding the crew during the win-ter. How successful this measure will be is a question until the house is sold, but if it proves 
effective Jim Haas sees the com-pany expanding the program with more houses next winter. The critical necessity of retaining a core of experienced, dependable employees was im-
pressed on Haas during a period this past summer when the volume of business was heavy and extra people were needed. They were almost impossible to 
hire. "We advertised and got no takers," he recalls. "Eventually we were forced to call on the Manpower labor pool but the quality of people you inherit in that pool isn't good. "This fall we took another tack," he said. "We hired qualified people to work six days 
a week and gave them a bonus of 50c an hour over the rate we 
were paying which was over the minimum scale. We felt the in-centive of earning bigger weekly checks would increase appli-cants and minimize turnover. I was disappointed with results of this plan." Despite the dearth of poten-tial employables, it continues to be standard operating pro-cedure to screen recruits with 
care. The objective must be to get the best employees possible in order to keep the quality stand-
ards up, believes Jim Haas. "We check every applicant for special abilities," he said. "If 
a man says he has a knack, or ex-perience, trimming shrubbery, 
we take him out in our shrubbery growing area and give him a pair of trimmers and request a demonstration. If he's good he is put on our trimming crew. If he shows promise, we put him with an expert for training. If he's r Suburban's manager Jim Haas gives last minute instructions to tractor driver, who is starting his day's work. terrible, chances are he'll latch on to our mowing crew. "We're strong on specializa-tion," Haas said. "We have crews skilled in trimming bushes, mow-ing, fertilizing, spraying and seeding. We find we get best results when employees develop proficiency at one detail. "We have people who do nothing but mow yards and they are well-trained in that one ac-tivity. Until we started bearing 
down and really training those 
employees we encountered problems with lackluster work. And let's face it mowing is the leader-chore Š the one you must handle properly if you're going 
to get the add-on, more pro-fitable services. "We've eliminated problems with employes who cut grass us-ing their favorite methods," said Haas. "We had some who cut in 
circles and lawns ended up with a snail designs. Others would divided a 100-foot wide yards in sections and mow entirely in squares. We train mowers to alternate patterns on each mow-ing and to always follow straight-line designs. We ask them not to 
strike out in circles from a tree but to run a straight-line pat-tern." Crews are formed of three or four men and each has a crew chief. The 150 regular customers are on a full-service program which 
covers fertilizing, use of pre-emergent materials in the spring, mowing, clean-up and power raking in the fall. All services are priced on an hourly rate with the exception of 
mowing which is flat-rated. Average tabs for mowing run between $25 and $30, according 
to Haas. Shrubbery trimming is 
priced at $12.50 an hour and most 
of these jobs run three and four hours, he says. In obtaining new business, the firm relies on Yellow Pages and newspaper advertising, word-of-mouth, radio spots and 
door-to-door canvassing. Last winter, Jim Haas knocked on doors of commercial firms and solicited business. Results, he said, were good. A progressive type, with his eyes always open to a better and different method of performing 
details attendant to the fast-growing business, Jim Haas sees computerization as the next step for the firm. Liquid-cooled 22 or 27 PTO hp diesels that are big enough to do all the jobs you need to do. Yet small enough so you can afford them. If the jobs you have are too big for a lawn and garden tractor and too small for a farm or industrial tractor, John Deere has the tractor you need. In fact, two of them. The new John Deere 850 and 950 Tractors. Rugged. Reliable. 
And built to handle the jobs you'll give them. Big-tractor features. Under each tractor's lift-up hood is a liquid-cooled, 
fuel-efficient diesel engine: 22 PTO hp for the 850,27 PTO hp for the 950. Both tractors have smooth-running trans-missions with 8 forward speeds, 2 reverse. Speeds are well-spaced from 
less than 1 mph for tilling to almost 12 mph for transporting. Other big-tractor features are standard.There's a differential lock that engages on-the-go for added traction in slippery conditions and a fully shielded 540-rpm rear PTO. Individual rear wheel brakes lock together for highway 
transport and lock down for parking. 
A heavy-duty drawbar adjusts to four positions. Hand and foot throttles are both standard. Integral equipment easily attaches to a 3-point hitch (Category 1). 
The adjustable, fully cushioned seat tilts 
forward for weather protection. Big-tractor versatility. You can match the 850 and 950 to your jobs. Wheel tread width adjusts front and rear. Ground clearance is nearly 14 inches under the 850-more than 15 inches 
under the 950. Maneuverability is superb since both tractors will turn 
within a 10-foot radius. So whether 
you're mowing, loading, plowing, digging, planting, or cultivating-these 
tractors can handle the job. Service you can count on. Your John Deere Dealer is always ready to help. Service training schools for the 850 and 950 have already been completed. And a complete inventory of service and replacement parts is ready. So stop by and see your John Deere Dealer soon for the complete story behind the new "Little-Big" Tractors. Or for free literature write to: 
John Deere, Box 63, Moline, Illinois 61265. Choose from a family of tractor-matched implements for all the jobs you need to do: Center-Mounted Rotary Mower 50 Utility Box Scraper 31 Integral Disk Johnson-Arps Model 30 Loader 350 Mower 71 Flexi-Planter 11 Light-Duty Field Cultivator 45 Integral Plow 31 Posthole Digger 100 Integral Disk 205 Rotary Chopper 2-Row Cultivator 30 Integral Plow 40 Rotary Tiller 45 Rear Blade 25A Flail Mower Nothing Runs Like A Deere' NEWSMAKERS Tom Nenadal, a horticulture graduate of Ohio State Univer-sity, has been named head of the maintenance division for Con-stant Care Lawn & Tree Service, Kansas City, Kan., according to company president Paul Con-stant. Also, Joe Krasinski, who recently received a masters degree in landscape architecture from Kansas State University, has joined the company. He will assist Robert Constant in the 
landscape architecture work the company does. The company has also recently bought swimming 
pool franchise and is installing 
one-piece, fiberglass San Juan swimming pools this year for the first time, Constant said. foreman for Hydro Lawn Spray, Salem, Va., according to com-pany general manager Pete Con-nelly. Stump will be in charge of handling scheduling and lawn spray personnel. Also, Michael Kenenski McKenney Brubaker has joined the com-
pany as a field technician. Terry Engles is field force operations manager for Sears Lawn & Leaf, Chicago. Also, Perry Soughers, with six years of experience in the lawn care in-
dustry Š some of it with ChemLawn Corp. and Keller Heartt Co., Inc. in Chicago Š is agronomist and field training manager for the company. Also, don Kuhn and Rik Hanson have 
been named customer service managers for the company and will handle field supervision of lawn care crews, according to John Craigie, vice president of sales and marketing. Pedro Loredo Jr. is manager for Bill Dunlop Lawn Service, Dallas, Texas. Also, Gilbert Con-
treras is mechanic for the com-pany and Joan Ortmayer is book-
keeper, according to Thelda Dunlop, president of the com-pany. John Kenenski has been named agronomist for the newly created Pittsburgh region of mpe a turfgrass specialist at tne com-ChemLawn Corp., Columbus, Ohio. He joined tne company as pany's McLean, Va. branch. Last year he worked with research 
director Dr. James F. Wilkinson at the company's Ohio Research Center evaluating growth retar-dants. He received his B.S. degree, specializing in turf, in 1974 from the University of Rhode Island. Jeff McKenney has joined ChemLawn Corp. as an agrono-mist working out of the com-pany's Detroit regional office. He nad previously oeen a ProTurf representative for O.M. Scott & 
Sons, Marysville, Ohio. He worked in Virginia and North 
Carolina. He received a B.S. from Ohio State University, specializing in turf manage-ment. Barry Stump has been named lawn spray supervisor and Pierce Allmon Henry F. Pierce has been named business center director for agricultural chemicals, Her-cules, Inc., Wilmington, Del. Ross H. Allmon has been appointed agricultural chemicals industry director. Among the products they are responsible for are is "Nitroform," a slow-release ni-trogen used by many lawn care professionals. Robert C. Jamrozy has been named director of advertising for McDonough Power Equipment, McDonough, Ga. He will serve as president of Henco Advertising, TRAILER MOUNTED SKID MOUNTED ACCESSORIES GREENS BOOM HOSE REEL G-GUN^H SCREW TYPE JACK ALSO CHOOSE FROM FIBERGLASS TANKS/MECHANICAL AGITATION/PUMPS AND ENGINES/BOOMS/HAND GUNS, ETC. WRITE OR CALL: Inc., in-house agency for performing all "Snapper"' lawn and garden equipment advertis-ing, promotion and public rela-tions functions. Robert L. Hergert has been named vice president of 
domestic marketing for Teledyne Wisconsin Motor, Milwaukee, Wis. Also, Wayne K. Danhof has been named director of domestic marketing. C.M. "Chuck" Bolt, Clifford B. McCurry, Shirley M. Runyans and C.C. Guy have been given expanded management 
responsibilities with Porter 
Brothers, Inc., Shelby, North Carolina-based distributor of portable outdoor equipment and turf maintenance equipment and supplies. Bolt is vice president of marketing; McCurry is secretary-
treasurer; Runyans is assistant secretary-treasurer; and Guy is vice president of administration. MONEYWISE Fringe benefits: how much is enough? A dental plan. A profit-sharing plan. A retirement policy. Incentives. All are different fringe benefits that some businessmen would like to add to their present benefit pack-age. Some businessmen feel the items are needed and re-quested by their employes, but that the dollar squeeze is keeping them from adding benefits. A recent survey by LAWN CARE INDUSTRY shows that most businessmen try to tailor their benefit plan to meet the needs of their workers. Some have workers with young families who need a hospitalization plan with maternity benefits. Other businessmen say dental benefits would be a good addition to help defray the cost of children's dental bills. Others mentioned that a retirement policy is a good way to keep employes. To others, incentives, not additional medical coverage, will make workers happy. Although all surveyed agreed on a need for fringe benefits, they disagreed on their importance to workers. One said, "I think it is very important to the service-type business. Ours is a very attractive package. One of the reasons people come to work for us is because our benefits are so good." Another feels fringes are a distant second to salary. "In any competitive market, where you might have factories pay-ing seven dollars an hour, you have to pay top dollar." He says prospective workers are more likely to look at the dollars per hour, rather than the fringe benefits. Worker's age is a big criteria in determining the impor-tance of fringes, one businessman said. "The younger guys are looking for the per-hour job. They are not concerned about benefits as someone in his 30's or 40's." The business-men surveyed pegged their fringe-benefit costs at between $1,500 and $3,000 a year per employe. The cost difference is the result of the type of benefits and the cost of the plans. Un-limited vehicle use, health and life insurance and vacations topped the list as the most expensive fringe items. One businessman has his workers pay for half of their health and life insurance until they have worked with the company for three years. At that point, he pays all of their life and health insurance premiums and picks up other medical bills for up to 10 percent of the worker's salary. To get the right policy for the best price, businessmen should shop around. "The costs for the policies vary," one said, "and it is a very competitive market. I try to check around for my medical coverage every two years to see if someone is offering a better deal." Some examples of various forms of fringe benefits offered by the various companies surveyed include: Hospitalization. Family coverage with major medical with the company paying the full cost; another businessman offers the same coverage but pays $70 a month while the employe pays $14; another pays major medical for the employe and re-quires that the worker pay for family coverage. Life insurance. 10,000 ordinary policy, accident disability, with the company paying for it and splitting the cost for family coverage; $10,000 policy with the employer and em-ploye splitting the cost for the first three years and then the employer paying for it after that; another offers $8,000 to $25,-000 policies with the company paying for it, size of policy is 
based on job; $4,000 minimum with the company paying for it; 
another offers a $5,000 policy, with the company paying for it. Vacations with pay. Usually anywhere from one to four weeks, depending on service with the company, two weeks being average; another offered no set vacations, but allowed scheduling for long paid weekends off; most offered normal holidays off. Retirement plans. One company surveyed offered a profit-sharing retirement plan, based on the amount of profits the company makes each year, employes have option of con-
tributing; another contributes $600 a month to a retirement fund, but the owner selects employes that qualify. Vehicle usage. Some offered unlimited use, others only for to and from work and emergencies, and some offered no personal use of vehicles. Š Mike Casey Special Products Division 301 CHARLES ST., so. BELOIT, IL 6ioeo HANSON EQUIPMENT CO. 815 389 2261 MONEY Bank loans: what kind of collateral? Sometimes, your signature is the only security the bank needs when making a loan. At other times, the bank requires addi-tional assurance that the money will be repaid. The kind and amount of se-curity depends on the bank and on the borrower's situation. Many lawn care companies reach a certain level of dollar volume of business, and then have to obtain a bank loan to ex-pand to its next plateau. If the loan required cannot be justified by the borrower's fi-nancial statements alone, a pledge of security may bridge the gap. The types of security: en-dorsers, co-maker, and guaran-tors; assignment of leases; trust receipts and floor planning; chat-tel mortgages; real estate; ac-counts receivables; savings ac-
counts; life insurance policies; and stocks and bonds. Endorsers, co-makers and guarantors. Borrowers often get other people to sign a note in or-der to bolster their own credit. These endorsers are contin-gently liable for the note they sign. If the borrower fails to pay up, the bank expects the endors-
er to make the note good. Some-times, the endorser may be asked 
to pledge assets or securities that he owns. A co-maker is one who cre-ates an obligation jointly with the borrower. In such cases, the bank can collect directly from ei-ther the maker or the co-maker. A guarantor is one who guar-antees the payment of a note by signing a guaranty commitment. Both private and government lenders often require guaran-tees from officers of corpora-tions in order to assure contin-
uity of effective management. 
Sometimes, a manufacturer will 
act as a guarantor for one of his customers. Assignment of leases. The as-signed lease as security is simi-lar to the guarantee. It is used, for example, in some franchise situations. The bank lends the money on a building and takes a 
mortgage. Then the lease, which the dealer and the parent fran-chise company work out, is as-signed so that the bank auto-matically receives the rent pay-
ments. In this manner, the bank is guaranteed repayment of the 
loan. Warehouse receipts. Banks also take commodities as secur-ity by lending money on a ware-house receipt. Such a receipt is usually delivered directly to the bank and shows that the mer-chandise used as security either has been placed in a public warehouse or has been left on your premises under the control 
of one of your employes who is bonded. Such loans are gener-ally made on staple or standard merchandise. The typical ware-house receipt loan is for a per-
centage of the estimated value of the goods used as security. Chattel mortgages. If you buy equipment such as a spray truck 
or office equipment, you may 
want to get a chattel mortgage loan. You give the bank a lien on the equipment you are buying. The bank also evaluates the present and future market value on the equipment being used to secure the loan. How rapidly will it depreciate? Does the borrow-er have the necessary fire, theft, property damage, and public lia-bility insurance on the equip-ment? The banker has to be sure 
that the borrower protects the equipment. Real estate. Real estate is another form of collateral for long-term loans. When taking a real estate mortgage, the bank finds out: (1) the location of the real estate, (2) its physical condi-tion, (3) its foreclosure value, and (4) the amount of insurance 
carried on the property. Accounts receivable. Many banks lend money on accounts receivable. In effect, you are counting on your lawn care cus-tomers to pay your note. Savings accounts. Some-times, you might get a loan by as-signing to the bank a savings ac-count. In such cases, the bank gets an assignment froip you and keeps your passbook. If you as-sign an account in another bank as collateral, the lending bank 
asks the other bank to mark its records ot show that the account is held as collateral. Life insurance. Another kind of collateral is life insurance. Banks will lend up to the cash value of a life insurance policy. You have to assign the policy to the bank. If the policy is on the life of an executive of a small corpora-tion, such as a lawn care com-pany, corporate resolutions must be made authorizing the assign-ment. Most insurance compan-ies allow you to sign the policy back to the original beneficiary when the assignment to the bank ends. Some people like to use life insurance as collateral rather than borrow directly from insur-ance companies. One reason is that a bank loan is often more convenient to obtain and may be COST CUTTINGS Radio-dispatched lawn maintenance? There are two things Don Napolitano, 35, Alex Napolitano, 58, and Dave Napolitano, 28, all of Associate Industries, Inc., Montebello, 
Calif., can't figure out how they did without in the earlier years of their eight-year-old lawn maintenance business. The first is full-time 
mechanics and the second is radio equipment in each of their maintenance trucks. The company recently purchased a $1,200 base station and a $1,600 radio unit for a num-
ber of their 25 vehicles. They will be adding the radio equipment to their fleet on a truck-by-truck basis. The equipment is manufactured by RCA. "This equipment is especially good for our irrigation in-stallations where there might be a problem with a mower hit-ting a head that needs to be repaired," Don Napolitano said. "It is impressive to our customers for us to be able to get a unit over to the job fast to handle the repair. I don't know how we got along without this in the past." He also cites the flexi-
bility of being able to reschedule lawn maintenance and other landscaping jobs in the middle of the day as another 
benefit of having the radio units in his key trucks. The second thing the Napolitanos say they can't remem-ber how they did without is the fact that they now have two 
full-time mechanics on the payroll. "Most companies can't even afford one, but once you have them working for you, it really saves you money," Don Napolitano said. "The conve-nience of being able to make our own repairs on our sched-ules and the convenience of buying our own repair parts is a 
real plus." He said that it allows the company to maximize their equipment to the fullest, and allows them to give the 
customer better service. "In the last three years we have only lost two maintenance accounts, and I think our efficiency and lack of downtime is one reason for it," he said. For example, they have three 48-inch Toro Front Runner 200 riding mowers, and at any given time two are out in the field and one is in the shop for routine maintenance. They plan four days of work and then into the shop for the maintenance. 
They will be going to four units soon. Associate Industries is a full-service company, doing design, installation, maintenance and irrigation installation. Last year it grossed $1.2 million, about $250,000 of it in mainte-nance. They employ about 50 year-round employes. obtained at a lower interest rate. Stocks and bonds. If you use stocks and bonds as collateral, they must be marketable. As a protection against market de-clines and possible expenses of liquidation, banks usually lend no more than 75 percent of the market value of high grade stock. The bank may ask the borrower for additional security or pay-ment whenever the market value of the stocks or bonds drops be-
low the bank's required margin. SOME NOER FOUNDATION FIRSTS Ł 1st to establish a Memorial Turfgrass Library. Ł 1st to gain industry support for turfgrass re-search on a continuing basis. Ł 1st to establish an investment fund from dona-tions so research could be supported on a con-tinuing basis. Ł 1st to publish extra Master theses for research workers. A total of 14 projects, conducted in 6 universi-ties, have produced 8 advanced degrees in turf-grass-related fields. For further expansion of these important projects your support is needed Be a part of future research. Send your contribution to: O. J. Noer Research Foundation, Inc. c/o Frank I. Shuman, Secretary-Treasurer Green Hill Road Lumberville, Pennsylvania 18933 Mechanical Agitator Direct Drive Pump Power Rewind Reels 30" x 18" x 18" Tool Box Meet the DSM 1200 SprayMaster Lawn Service Unit ountz We SERVICE what we build 614/253-7479 EQUIPMENT CO. 1437 E. Fifth Ave., Columbus, Ohio 43219 w 2: 5 PC {-ca D D g w oc < u Z < McGinty pioneers Chicago market McGinty Brothers, Inc., a pro-fessional lawn and tree care firm based in Long Grove, 111. north of Chicago is one of the oldest and best-established companies in a 
growth market that has attracted considerable competition in the years since the company started in business. "Before anyone had really heard of lawn spraying, my father was going down the block TOOLS,TIPS & TECHNIQUES Charcoal can nullify pesticide misuse Where chemical spill, overapplication or misuse takes place in a home lawn situation, a lawn care businessman can alleviate damage from some chemicals by using activated charcoal, tests at the University of Rhode Island have shown. Dr. John A. Jagschitz, associate professor, says that the charcoal should be applied as soon as possible after the ac-cidental treatment. Success often depends upon getting the charcoal in contact with the chemical before it gets into the plant, he said. He recommends keeping a bag of charcoal handy for immediate emergency use. Through its ability to hold and trap chemicals, activated charcoal can remove impurities from various substances, he said. It is used as a purifying agent in cigaretter filters, municipal drinking water and filtering of beverages. During the past 10 years about 25 field tests were performed at the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station to determine if the activated charcoal could indeed nullify harmful effects of pesticide misuse. The activated charcoal used in most of the tests was a dry, finely divided form called Gro-Safe, a pro-duct marketed by the Specialty Chemicals Division of ICI United States, Inc. The charcoal at a rate of 500 pounds per acre was applied to lawn-type turfgrass composed of Kentucky bluegrass, red fescue and colonial bentgrass within four hours after treat-ment with various chemicals. The charcoal was successful in reducing grass discoloration from high rates of 2,4-D, bromox-ynil, dicamba, endothall and silvex. Dr. Jagschitz said charcoal is safe to handle, but that because it is light and powdery, it requires gentle handling. He suggests that it be protected from wind and that it be moved slowly to minimize dusting. It can be applied dry or as 
a spray. For chemical spills of undiluted active material, the 
dry application is preferred. For spills diluted with water and for other uses, applying it in a slurried form with a sprinkler can or with regular spray equipment is cleanest and easiest, he said. ŁŁŁŁ SPRAYERS Whether your needs are for weed control, lawn insect or fungicide spraying, ornamental and shade tree spraying, or any general out-door work, we have the exact sprayer you require. Our reinforced fiberglass low profile tanks are available in the following sizes: 50, 100, split 100 (2 x 50), 200 and split 200 (2 x 100) gallon sizes. The reinforced fiberglass tanks are a low profile square design to minimize space, look attractive, and reduce chemical sloshing that you get in higher round style tanks. These tank sizes can be incorporated into many varieties of sprayers using Hypro, Bean, Cat or Sherwood pumps, either electric or gasoline powered. All our spray units come complete with tank, pump unit, welded steel chassis and hose reel, either skid or trailer mount. P.O. BOX 124 AMITYVILLE, NEW YORK 11701 516-799-7805 with a two-wheeled cart and of-fering the service," says Charles P. McGinty, president. "That was 26 years ago, and he did the work in his spare time." Today McGinty Brothers, Inc. Charlie McGinty discusses a spray-ing project with an employe. numbers 3,000 homeowners as active clients and maintains a list of 7,000 municipalities/corporat-ions/home-owners for whom some work has been done. Reflecting its steady growth, the company has moved three times in the last 26 years, and now oc-cupies a 15,000-square-foot facility in the Chicago suburb. The company fields 20 men with 15 trucks and 15 pieces of mobile equipment, including spray trucks, tree trucks, cherry-
pickers and hydroseeders. Besides McGinty, the manage-ment team includes Jim Safran, general manager, and Joe Arns, superintendent of the tree department. The increasing acceptance of the company's services by the public Š the company had only 300 accounts in 1962 Š is part of a pattern of slow but steady growth keyed to satisfying homeowner's wants. "We had confined ourselves to weed spraying at first," says McGinty, whose college back-ground is in forestry. "This was a parttime job for me during the summer. I took over the company fulltime in 1963. By then we had 
added fertilizing and crabgrass control and expanded our tree service to include trimming and removal." Today the firm also does roadside spraying, and has held 
contracts to care for the grass areas of the entire Illinois tollway system. As a lawn and 
tree care specialist, the company 
does no landscaping or grounds maintenance work. "Most lawn care services," McGinty points out, "take care of the homeowners' lawn but do lit-tle in the way of tree spraying and feeding, let alone the full service of trimming and removal. "When a client comes to us he is getting a full-service organiza-tion. We've generated a lot of business because the client doesn't have to go to two or three different companies to get the MARKETING IDEA FILE Small town lawn care Is a lawn care business only appropriate for major metro-politan areas Š areas with Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) populations of a quarter-million people or more? Walter Hobgood, former Roundup product manager for Monsanto Co., St. Louis, doesn't think so. Before he left the United States to take an overseas management post with Monsanto, Hobgood told LAWN CARE INDUSTRY: "There is a whole lot of business in lawn care in the small towns just waiting to be asked for," he said. He characterized towns in the population range of between 50,000 and 100,000 and some even smaller as being capable of supporting one or more small lawn care businesses. He said areas such as the Rio Grande section of Texas and parts of Iowa are the next possible frontier for the lawn care business. "These towns offer the chance for a lawn care business-man to come in, be the only operator in town and carve out a 
real nice business and profit for himself," he said. "With a good marketing plan, the right person can be very suc-cessful." This type of thinking is nothing new to many lawn care businessmen across the country. Pete Connelly has built a 
small but profitable business with his Hydro Lawn Spray in Roanoke, Va. in the last two years with about 750 customers on the books. Neil Darnell and Joe Jackson have 6,000 customers with their Green Lawnp Fertilizer Corp. in Kansas City, Mo., and have expanded their operation to Springfield, Mo. about 130 miles to the southeast of Kansas City, where they have about 1,000 customers at present. They are also breaking into the St. Joseph area, about lV2-hour drive to the north of Kansas City. In both cities, they say they are the only 
company operating on a major basis. Ron Giffen, national marketing director for Lakeshore Equipment & Supply Co., Elyria, Ohio, tells of a number of his many lawn care accounts that buy from him who are operating out of the high-pressure and competitive situations in the major metropolitan areas. "Their gross might not be that high, but then again, neither is their overhead or travel time or advertising costs," Giffen says. "Lawn care in a small 
town is a nice way to make a living." A McGinty worker pulls a spray hose onto a job site. job done." McGinty Brothers' basic lawn care program includes five treat-ments: pre-emergent crabgrass spraying in March and April; weed spraying in mid-spring; and dry fertilizer applications in 
spring, summer and early fall. The firm also provides insect and disease diagnosis and control with particular care given to the problems of Fusarium blight, leaf spot and stripe smut. Tree and shrub care services offered by the company are based on yearly sprayings for in-sects and disease. Early spring sprayings are necessary for some problems like Dutch Elm dis-ease, and cottony maple scale. A late spring spraying controls 
inchworms, aphids and mites. Also, special sprays are avilable 
for problems such as rust, scab, anthracnos and borers. The company has met with a high acceptance rate because it has been able to convince home-
owners that proper lawn and tree care enhance the value of 
any home or office property. "A good lawn and beautifully main-tained trees and shrubs are a standout on any block," McGinty 
says. "One McGinty job on a block often creates a market for others. In fact, referrals and repeat business from satisfied customers account for at least 80 
percent of our business. A neighbor, friend, or relative sees our trucks year after year, and sees the kind of work we do, and they think, 'Wow, my lawn could look like that/ " Another important reason that the business has grown is simply that, with more leisure time available, homeowners want to be able to enjoy it. "Let's 
face it Š taking care of lawns, trees, and shrubs the right way can be time-consuming and even aggravating," McGinty points out. "An inexperienced amateur gardener can actually spend more money looking after his lawn himself than he'd pay for us to come in and do the job." Many homeowners frankly want the prestige and the actual enhancement of value that goes 
along with an expertly cared-for piece of property. "The problem 
is that getting it into shape can be extremely hard work," McGinty notes. "That's what we're here for. I think many people really would like to be able to enjoy the 
warm summer months without 
worrying about their trees and lawns." Despite the relatively bright picture McGinty paints for his company Š and the tree and lawn care industry as well Š he las some cautious words about the rapid growth the industry has enjoyed. "Some newcomers to the business don't fully comprehend the responsibilities of a business such as this," he says. An inex-perienced operator can do tre-mendous damage to a lawn within a very short period of time. This business requires a solid investment in machinery and manpower. More important, it requires people with'a sound 
knowledge of what they're doing 
and the experience and equip-
ment to back it up." For that reason, McGinty has not joined the severe price com-petition underway in the Chicago market. His firm appeals to customers on the basis of experi-ence and reliability, not just price. McGinty Bros., Inc. does not compete with landscape con-
tractors, but actually works with them on a regular basis. The company will provide the lawn 
and tree spraying and the land-scape contractor will set up the regular maintenance program. McGinty Bros., Inc. also provides hydroseeding for the landscape 
contractor. His sales representatives es-timate each job individually, tak-ing into consideration lot size and the precise treatments re-quired for fertilizing, weed and crabgrass control, and special needs such as lawn disease and insect infestation. When consumers compare, they can determine the value. Once they receive competent service and observe the results, the value of McGinty's services speak for themselves. And the 
solid base of customers built by the firm continues to grow. "Many of our customers realize the value of staying power, and ability to deliver the same consistent high quality of service year after year. That's the best recommendation anyone can have," he observes. Bison by Satoh Now Offers Dual Clutch for Live PTO. Now Bison is even better For mowing. Grading. Loading. It's the only tractor of its class with live PTO. So your operators can change speeds without slowing or stopping their implements. The 27-hp Bison handles everything effectively. Thriftily. You pay for just what you need. And you get a tractor that goes where the bigger ones can't. A wide range of attachments permits year-round use. The 4-cylinder gasoline engine assures quick starts even in cold weather Among the features: 2-speed PTO (540 and 1000 rpm], 6 forward and 2 re-verse speeds, Category 1 Ł 3-point hitch plus attached drawbar, live hydraulics, differential lock, sealed brakes, adjusta-ble wheel spacing, hour meter, full light-ing, choice of tire tread, downswept muffler and the list goes on. Before you make a decision on any tractor, be sure to check out Bison. At 700 dealers throughout the U.S.A. And if you don't know the one nearest you, please write. You'll be glad you did. r* > Z n > m Z a c CD H 70 C z 
m CO 00 PO. Box 5020, New York. N.Y 10022 W z D oc p D Q Z w a: < u z < 1Š3 TERSAN disease control programs fill in the extra profit you've been missing. Your ability to recognize and treat the diseases that attack your customers' lawns means extra income for you. Every lawn on your list is susceptible to a variety of diseases. And every time you spot one, it's a chance to move in with a new service to keep your present customers happy, sign 
up some new ones, and generate new profits. But there's a catch. You've got to diagnose the disease quickly. And treat it fast with the right fungicide. That's where 
the TERSAN fungicide team comes in. This lineup of four 
fungicides gives you a proven, effective control for just about every lawn disease you'll ever run into. No hit-or-miss guesswork. No costly, wasteful shotgun treatments. Start with some Du Pont literature on how to identify and control lawn diseases. It's yours for the asking when you 
mail in the coupon. Then you'll be well on your way to filling in that hole in your profit picture. jsatasiESS m PQNJD Lawn Products ŁHulWilMO" E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (Inc.) TERSAN Turf Products Room 36569 Wilmington, Delaware 19898 PLEASE SEND ME YOUR LITERATURE ON LAWN DISEASE CONTROL. Name Title Company Address City State Zip WE OFFER THE FOLLOWING SERVICES: Ł Lawn mowing and maintenance Ł Weed control Ł Insect control Ł Disease (fungus) control Ł Tree and shrub care Ł Other OUR PRESENT ACCOUNTS NUMBER: Ł Less than 500 Ł 500 to 1,000 Ł 1,000 to 5,000 Ł Over 5,000 OUR EMPLOYEES NUMBER: Ł 1 to 5 Ł 6 to 10 Ł 11 to 15 Ł over 15 OUR BUSINESS IS: Ł Independent Ł Chain Ł Franchise Ł Other Circle 107 on free information card w X D the west side, four branches of ChemLawn (with 40,000 custom-ers, according to some esti-mates), three Lawn-a-Mat fran-chises, two Lawn Doctor fran-chises, L & M Lawncare on the east side, Davey Lawnscape in Brecksville, American Green Corp. division of DiSanto Land-scaping, Spra-Gro in Bedford, Yardmaster in Mentor, Reliable Lawn Spray, Green Grass Lawn Care, Perma-Green, Dura-Lawn Care, Ullrich's Lawn Care Systems, Mentor Lawn Care, Cardinal Landscaping, Beautiful Lawn, Tru-Green Corp. in Solon, Custom Lawns in North Olm-sted, Easy Lawn, L & M Weed Sprayers on the east side, Per-sonal Lawn Care in Rocky River, Leisure Lawns in Inde-pendence, Parma Lawn Care, Richmond Lawn Service in Rich-mond Heights, Ohio Lawn Care in Broadview Heights and many others. ^ If you are in the lawn care 
* business and want to find out 
g what the lawn care market in q your city is going to be like in a 2 few years, come to Cleveland. It will only take a few days, u First, check into Bond Court z Hotel or Stouffer's Inn on the % Square downtown. If it is J summertime, you can check out the Indians playing in nearby Municipal Stadium on Lake Erie. And Š if you are inclined Š the brown-bagging secretaries on Public Square at lunchtime. If it is fall, get tickets for Browns' games. But more than anything, go to the suburbs. Drive around a bit, and you are bound to see four or five lawn care trucks from competing companies. The 
competition is that tough. If you have the time, flag down one of the trucks and talk to the oper-
ator. Or go to his main office and talk to his boss. And you can just about bet that the main man in the com-
pany will talk to you. He'll tell you that Cleveland is a mature 
market, that it has well over 100,-
000 homeowners receiving a bonafide lawn care service. He'll tell you that when he knocks on a door or makes a call on a pro-spective customer that he has no problem explaining who he is or 
what his service does for a lawn. Tom Crowley, owner of Lawn Doctor of East Suburbs for five years says that "We don't get calls from people who want us to 
mow or rototill anymore. People are very aware of lawn services in Cleveland." Nate Robinson, manager of Yardmaster in Mentor to the east says: "It is not that hard to sell the typical Cleveland customer anymore. It is not viewed as a novelty but as a commodity now, a service that people are used to and ex-pect." They expect it all right. Chuck Bradley, branch manager of the area's largest ChemLawn Corp. branch in Willoughby says: "Peo-ple view it as a status symbol to have that big white truck pull up and have a man or two get out 
and work on your lawn. You 
could say that keeping up with the Jones' is important here." But even though the home-owners of Cleveland are very much aware of lawn care ser-vices, that does not mean that they aren't tough customers on occasion. Nick Licursi of L & M Lawn-care says that it is very difficult to put anything over on the typi-cal Clevelander. "They want to 
know what they are going to get from you," he says, "and they ex-
pect service. The company that gives and keeps up the service keeps the business." A1 Dall of Lawnco stresses that Cleveland is made up of many conserva-
tive ethnic communities, and even advertises in many of the Polish, Hungarian, Czecho-slovakian and other ethnic news-papers to reach them. "They are tough," he says. "But once you get them and deliver a beautiful lawn, they will stay with you for-ever and tell their friends. And this goes for the children who moved to the suburbs too, not just the parents." When you ask the collective main men of lawn care com-panies in Cleveland what their number one lawn care problem is, they will reply "The weather." 
Cleveland is noted for having In-dian summer weather in Decem-
ber and blizzards in late March. This year, for example, the 
weather has been cold and wet. Below normal temperatures through winter and heavy snows forced lawn care businessmen to start late. In May, they were held up by rains and more cold weather and wind. And the hot, stifling, humid summers in Cleveland make the situation just right for the Fusar-ium blight problems lawn care businessmen face every year. And it is not just the weather that creates the Fusarium prob-
lems. As Dall says: "In the 60's, the extension services were recommending and everybody wanted Merion bluegrass lawns. And when you have Merion, you 
have Fusarium Š it even rhymes." In many ways, Cleveland represents what the lawn care business will become in metro-politan areas across the country in the next few years. A stable 
number of single-family homes with 25 to 30 percent of them receiving lawn care services. And 10 to 20 new lawn care com-panies Š both large and small Š listed in the "Lawn Mainte-nance" section of the Yellow Pages every spring. The names of Cleveland lawn care companies goes on and on, but some of them are: Lawnco in Brooklyn Heights, Perf-a-Lawn in North Royalton, Lawn Tech on I; v; , Š ' \ r v Łf Cleveland by Bob Earley, editor and Mike Casey, assistant editor Al Dall, 45, owner of Lawnco in Brooklyn Heights started in the landscaping business in 1961. He received many requests for applying fertilizer and weed con-trol Š so many, in fact, that he had to put one man exclusively on these jobs. Then in 1967, he went at signing up customers with special promotions and a charge of $1 per 1,000 square feet and a $2 traveling charge. "We did direct mail, every-thing, but we could not give the service away then," he told LAWN CARE INDUSTRY. But how things have changed Š both prices and the Cleveland home-owner's acceptance of a lawn care service. He now has 25 full-time employes, 5,000 customers at the beginning of this lawn care season and is looking to 6,000 by the end of the season. He said the landscaping part of his business grosses about $50,000, and that this represents about 10 percent of his business. "We do it a little different, because we do not believe in li-quid fertilizing," he said. He believes that a dry fertilizer pro-gram gives him more versatility. "You can get more nitrogen down with no burn," he said. His program includes outfitting Econoline-type vans with a 250-gallon tank for weed control spraying, and storage facilities for dry fertilizers and insecti-
cides. His employes use Scott's spreaders to apply the material, sometimes using a unit until the 
wheels wear off. He figures that he can outfit a truck for between $9,000 and $10,000 Š about half of what it costs to put a spray tank truck on the road. "And when the vans get old, it is easy to sell them," he said. He tries to add a new truck to his fleet every time he puts on 
600 new customers. His vans have enough material to make about 30 stops a day Š about 250,000 square feet of applica-tions a day with his average 8,000-square-foot lawn. His pro-gram includes five trips a year, one about every five or six weeks. "If the customer waters right, I can keep the lawn green all year," he said. His minimum 
charge is $18.50 for 4,000 square feet of lawn, and rates between $1.75 and $2 for every 1,000 square feet after that. When a fungicide is needed, Dall usually recommends the chemical to the homeowner to apply himself, but will spray if the customer desires. "We don't include this or soil tests or liming as part of our program, only rec-ommend it if the customer needs 
it," he said. "And we don't care who does it, we just want it done. to page 16 Downtown's Cleveland's Terminal Tower (upper left], Lake Erie (top), and Cuyahoga River. Perf-a-Lawn's one-ton, 750-gallon spray tank truck (right); Nick Licursi, Dick Desberg and foe Matulis of L & M Lawncare, in their well-appointed office (mid-dle left). Tom Crowley, owner of Lawn Doctor of East Su-burbs, with his hand equip-ment fmiddle right); a por-tion of the Scott's spreaders used by Lawnco, Inc. in its granular fertilizing opera-tion (right). j Cleveland from page 15 W z 5 oc H C/3 D Q Z w cc < u Z < ŁŠJ The main thing is that the people see us out there that the lawn is green." Although Dall does not adver-tise very much or often, he will sometime take out an ad in one of Cleveland's many ethnic news-papers. He gets an interpreter to translate the ad for the news-paper's readership. "Sometimes we get into problems when we get a guy on the phone that can't speak English well, but we usually work it out. The ethnic neighborhoods in Cleveland are tough to crack, but once you treat the people right, they will stay with you forever and tell all of their friends." Bob Minick, 26, is branch manager of the Cleveland outlet fpr Perf-a-Lawn Corp., in subur-ban North Royalton. The com-pany is a chain in the Dayton, Ohio area with 10 branches, mostly in the Midwest. The com-pany opened in the Cleveland area in 1975, and over 2,300 customers on the books at the beginning of this lawn care season and is hoping for 30 per-cent growth this year. The 
branch has six turf specialists and two secretaries. The Perf-a-Lawn program is basically liquid application utilizing one-ton trucks with 750-gallon spray tanks. They do four applications a year. The com-pany's minimum charge is $19.75 for 5,000 square feet, and the price goes up $2.20 for every 1,-000 square feet after that. Minick said about about 30 to 40 percent 
of his jobs are minimum spray jobs in the suburbs nearer downtown Cleveland. "We make money on the small lawns," he said. "We love to do them. I would much rather have 20 small lawns than 10 large ones in a day." He said that 90 percent of the company's promotion dollars are invested in brochures. They will mail about 100,000 in the Cleveland area this year, but not all at the same time. "We try to space out the mailings so we can 
handle the requests when they come in," he said. He said that he hopes for a one percent return on any mailing that they do, and 
wonders if the homeowner is building up a resistance to direct mail campaigns most lawn care companies in the Cleveland area do. "I would Š hate to see it get to the point where our brochures and the brochures of other com-panies are view as junk mail." When Bob Deeks was in high school, he mowed lawns to pick up some extra money. The out-
door work interested him, and he 
decided to pursue a lawn care career. Today he has 750 
customers. His story doesn't seem too un-usual from other lawn care 
businessmen, but it is when you realize that Deeks is only 24 years old and started his business four years ago. The adolescent-faced owner of Lawn Tech, Westlake, has built up his operation literally from the ground Š he started his business in the basement of a 
cleaning store. Now Lawn Tech employs five persons and has two trucks. To prepare for his career, Deeks studied turf management 
at Ohio State University's Wooster Agriculture Branch. Lawn Tech's four-option pro-gram reflects Deeks interest to work with the customer on as close to a one-to-one basis as possible. The four programs include a variety of different applications, 
such as granular fertilizer, granular preemergence herbi-cides, preventive fungicides and liquid broadleaf control. Customers have the option of taking some or all of these applications every four, five or seven weeks or in late spring and early fall. The price for the ser-vices is $2.25 per 1,000 square feet per application. "We want to communicate and work with the customer to give them the best program for their needs," Deeks says. He says his four program options gives 
him the needed flexibility. Deeks attributes part of his success to communications over a telephone. "After I estimate a job and if the people are not home, I try to 
call them that night. I know it 
means 20 or 30 phone calls a night, but it is worth it. That's the way we get a lot of our business Š up to 30 percent of it," he says. Deeks says he gets most of his customers through Yellow Pages advertising. Besides the applica-
tions, Lawn Tech maintains one industrial concern, but it is its only maintenance work. Chuck Bradley, 29, is manager of Cleveland's largest branch operation for ChemLawn Corp. 
He is based in Willoughby. ChemLawn now has four branches in the Cleveland area. Manager of the Elyria branch is 
Butch Reynolds, who along with Chuck and others opened the first ChemLawn branch in 1973 
in Macedonia to the south of Cleveland. Hank Krause is 
manager of the Brunswick branch, and Vaughn Fine is manager of the Solon branch. Bradley says that the Cleveland market is growing and becoming more concentrated 
every year. "In an area where I first started spraying when I joined the company, there are three trucks operating there now," he said. Mentor, a sprawl-ing suburb just east of his Willoughby branch, has three of his 16 trucks assigned to it. To meet increasing demand, his branch added five trucks and 
eight new employes this lawn care season. And that was after interviewing 400 applicants for the eight available jobs, Bradley said. The ChemLawn charge for the basic four-application pro-gram is $21.25 for the first 5,000 square feet and $2.75 for each 1,-000 square feet after that. "We 
have eight different programs here because of the varieties of grasses we have to maintain, the different soil compositions, and the difference in maintenance requirements of old lawns and new lawns," he said. ChemLawn is testing tele-vision advertising in Cleveland this lawn care season, but Bradley feels that the television just sparks the homeowner to call ChemLawn after the service has been recommended to him by a neighbor or friend. Rudy Pierce, 52, saw an ad in the Wall Street Journal 11 years ago and started his Lawn-a-Mat 
of Rocky River operation then while still owning a Mister Donut 
franchise. He started in the 
largely blue-collar area of Parma outside of Cleveland, with home lawns averaging 4,000 square feet. A few years ago, he sent out a test mailing to homes in the more affluent western suburbs of Rocky River, Westlake, Bay Village and North Olmsted, and 
has now moved his operation that side of town. He has 750 cus-
tomers and averages about 100 new ones a year, with no adver-tising at all. He has three full-time em-ployes during the peak of the 
lawn care season. "The men to the work, and I do the follow-up," he says. "I do this to keep the quality up. If I got any big-ger, I would have to relegate this job to somebody else, and I just couldn't be sure about the qual-ity then." He charges four cents per square foot per year to main-tain a home lawn. His program includes granular fertilization, weed control, insect control, dis-ease control, power rolling, pow-er aeration, reseeding, soil test-ing and liming. He has a 4,000-square-foot-minimum charge, and says that 5,000 square feet is 
his typical-size lawn. For the four basic mainte-nance trips, Pierce says there are probably 12-13 visits made to a homeowner's lawn each season. This includes four follow-up trips to check the application, a soil test and lime if necessary, and possibly two to four special applications for disease out-breaks or follow-up weed con-trol. "If a potential customer wants just weed control, I recom-mend a spray company," he says. "The spray companies have not 
hurt me at all, I thought they 
would when they first came in, but they have just made the peo-ple more conscious of a lawn ser-vice." Pierce does not believe in in-centives for his workers because "when you are hustling to make that weekly bonus you start to neglect the lawns." But he does have a year-end bonus of one dollar per hour worked for the season. He pays his men be-tween $4.50 and $5 an hour dur-ing the season and pays out bo-nuses of between $1,500 and $2,-000 at the end of the season. His employes average about eight to 10 jobs a day. He believes in keeping his work area concentrated. "My trucks only put 7,000 miles a year on them," he said. "Sometimes my man parks his truck with our Lawn-a-Mat unit on a street and does not move the carrier for three days." This pays off in another way for Pierce, because he does not have to advertise. "When I first started out, I used to spend $8,000 a year on advertising," he said. "But now, 
working in a five-mile by seven-mile area with four trucks, the Minick Pierce s I people see the units moving around and that is all of the ad-vertising we need. My business is to the point wh6re I don't have to sell it. I go on referrals only." For his old customers, Pierce sends a renewal before the sea-son starts and offers them a six percent discount if they pay for the whole year in advance. "A third of the people take advan-
tage of it," he said. "I take the money, buy all of my chemicals for the year on a two percent dis-count for paying in 10 days." The thing Pierce likes about the lawn care business is that "most of my expenses are varia-ble Š if I don't have the busi-ness, I don't have to pay for materials and labor." Nick Licursi, 30, and Joe Matulis, 29, have been in the landscaping business for eight 
years, but just last year began L & M Lawncare. Already they have 3,000 customers on the books, with another 25 or 30 com-ing in every day this spring. Five 
of their eleven trucks carry 800-gallon spray tanks, and they have two more on order. They are hoping to have between 4,000 and 5,000 customers by the end of the year. Obviously, they have gone into the lawn care business in a big way. Their program is based on applying granular materials in a liquid suspension system. Their selling point to their customers is that they "build beautiful lawns from the roots up" with granular materials. Licursi and Matulis and their public relations consultant Š Dick Desberg Š are promoters of the first rank. They appear on as many radio and television talk shows as they can, advertise through newspapers, Yellow Pages, direct mail, and also on radio and television. They also will be promoting their business in another way in the coming year Š through fran-chising. Licursi said they plan to sell 20 franchises in one year throughout Ohio and other states. They already have inter-est from about that many pros-
pective franchisees. "We think this might be the way to go," Licursi said. "We know promotion advertising and publicity. We have created confi-
dence and stability and recogni-tion in the market. And we are going to further this recognition factor through franchising." But they are not going to take just anybody into their organiza-tion. "We are looking at all of the prospects closely, looking for the 
right people who can relate to the customer and provide ser-vice," he said. Matulis says that there is still a bright future for the growth of the lawn care business in the Cleveland market. "Only 20 per-cent of our customers are people who have received some type of lawn care from other compan-ies," he said. "Almost 80 percent of them are new. We in this in-
dustry are carving out a whole new market for ourselves." Another thing they are con-sidering is cutting their number of applications from the stan-dard four to three. Licursi said that their patent-pending fertil-izer mix will continue to feed for 10 to 12 weeks. "With a 33-week season that breaks down the three applications," he said. "He would not elaborate on the fer-tilizer except to say that it has slow-release properties. Matulis and Licursi are leary of using services to distribute 
door hangers for promotion. 
"There is no guarantee that they are being delivered," Licursi 
said. "So as we are going back to using mail ot distribute our mate-rial." He said it costs about 3V2 or four cents to distribute bro-chures through services, and 7Vz 
cents through bulk mail (al-though the new postal rates will change that price to a higher 
amount). At Davey Lawnscape's Brecksville office the motto is, "We try harder." Like Avis the Brecksville operation is trying to 
be number one. Currently, the office, which services the Cleveland metropolitan area, is second to Akron, which has about 6,400 ac-counts. The Brecksville office has 5,000 customers this year and 
about 75 to 80 percent are resi-dential accounts, says district manager Mark Laube. The Brecksville office's terri-tory covers Cleveland and 90 suburbs in five counties. Laube, who studied horticulture and turf management at Ohio State m Matulis Laube Lawn care headache no. 231 hates the What Frank Soos sometimes about the lawn care business are headaches Š those customer com-plaints that can drive a businessman 
crazy. "You want to know about head-aches?," Soos says as he pauses to take a hard drag on a cigarette. "I'll tell you about a big one. "It concerned these two women. What do you call them, when they're not married? Spinsters. That's it," Soos says. It all started when Soos' company Š Petite Fleur Landscaping, Inc., Brecks-ville Š was installing sod at a home near the spinsters' home. They saw his work, liked it and asked him to do the same for their home. While the two women were at work, Soos' crew installed the sod. On the same day, Soos returned home to find his wife on the telephone with one of the sisters, who had just returned home. "The sister was crying and telling me what a rotten job we did. She wanted us to come and rip the sod out right away. " 'What's wrong' I asked?' "She said, 'It is all in little pieces not in one piece. It looks terri-ble.' " With a husky laugh, Soos recalls how he tried to explain to the customer what was wrong. "My wife who was listening to the tele-
phone conversation says all she heard me say was, 'But lady . . . But lady ... But lady ... But lady,' " he says. Finally, he got enough time to tell the woman that sod does not come in a carpet but in blocks, which eventually grow together. "That didn't make her happy either," Soos says. To appease the woman, Soos said, "Okay, you don't have to pay me until you're satisfied." Eventually, she paid Soos and left him with an awful good headache story to tell. p > z n > 73 w z a c CD H 73 < C z m University's Wooster Agricul-ture Branch, hopes his area will be number one next year. The Brecksville office is starting ist third year of operation and the Akron office is in its fourth. The enthusiastic 24 year-old district manager heads a 16-man fulltime crew, which operates 11 trucks with 800 and 1,200-gallon tanks and three pickup trucks with 200-gallon tanks. "We really work a lot of hours. Last year, it was 42 days straight with 12 to 15 hours a day. When you work that much you get to be like a family," he says. A sign in office inviting all work-to page 18 *m* Licursi -~£ # i Kiernan - Cleveland w z D oc H CO D Q g w < u 2 < ers to a party attests to the crew's esprit de corps. Laube credits his crew with helping to double this year's cus-tomers over last year's. Among some of the new accounts are the Cleveland Art Museum and the Cleveland Clinic, he says pro-udly. All customers receive a liquid four-application service, which includes: Šfertilization, preemer-gence herbicides, potassium and broadleaf weed control in the spring; Šfertilization, potassium, insecticides and broadleaf weed control in the late spring; Šfertilizer, potassium, in-secticides and broadleaf weed control in the summer, Šand fertilizer, potassium and broadleaf weed control in the fall. Besides the application ser-vice, soil samples are taken of the customers' lawns and sent to Kent, Ohio, Davey's headquar-ters, where the samples are ex-amined for the pH level. Soil samples are being taken now, and the test results will be returned to customers by the fall. Depending on the results, cus-tomers will be advised to apply lime or sulfur if needed. ''This service is provided at no extra charge to the customer. It is a good selling point," Laube says. The soil sample tests helps get the customer involved in taking care of his lawn. Laube says some customers expect the lawn spray to take care of all their problems. It is important to educate the customer about caring for his 
lawn. Davey provides its cus-tomers with a booklet explain-ing lawn maintenance practices. The booklet and the advice from the soil sample tests help inform from page 17 the customer and add profes-sionally to lawn care, he says. To attract new customers, Davey uses a mass media cam-paign including a direct mail-
ings coordinated with ads in the area's largest circulation news-paper. Both have worked very well in attracting customers. Of its last year's customers, Davey has retained about 90 percent, 
Laube says. About pricing, the Davey dis-trict manager says, "It is very 
competitive. We charge $28 per 
application for an 8,000-square-
foot lawn (Davey's average cus-tomer). " At the beginning of this sea-son, Laube says some competi-tors were underestimating the size of lawns to give lower prices and attract more customers. "I don't like it when this happens, and our people are told to give an 
accurate measure. You're cut-ting your own profits when you 
underestimate a lawn." This year is Laube's first year as district manager. He started as 
a technician three years ago and worked his way up. He says he likes the responsibilities and is eager to make Brecksville num-ber one. Bill Kiernan, Sr., 53, still con-siders himself a lawn care stu-dent, even after 32 years in the 
business, a college business de-gree and four years of law school. "You can never stop studying in this business. You always have to be reading," he says. His of-fice, in a Tudor home, has a library of horticulture books and lawn care magazines. Kiernan, Kiernan Landscape Contractors, Cleveland Heights, recalled an instance when his reading paid off. "The first time I saw Fusarium blight, I wasn't sure what it was. However, I'd been reading an article about it. There were pictures of it also, so I was able to match the pictures with the practical situation." From the magazine article and photograph, he was able to identify the problem and sug-gest a cure. Besides his interest in keeping up with current lawn care techniques, Kiernan has a solid academic business back-
ground. He received his business de-gree from John Carroll Univer-sity, University Heights, and at-tended law school at Cleveland State University's John Marshall Law School. Although he com-pleted his class work, Kiernan has not taken the bar exam be-cause of work conflicts. "Every time they offer the bar exam, I'm in the busy season of getting the business ready for the spring. And the tension is just too much," he says clenching his 
fists and gritting his teeth in 
mocked anxiety. However, Kiernan has no re-grets about not taking the bar exam or not becoming a lawyer. Lawn care and landscaping are his first loves and lasting loves. Kiernan became interested in lawn care while a youngster. The Cleveland public school system offered courses in horticulture, which interested him, and he worked parttime maintain lawns. Following his discharge from the armed forces, he started his landscaping company in 1946. Today his brother, Ed, and son, Bill, Jr., 32, are his partners. When he started Kiernan did most of the outside work him-self, but today sets outdoors less and less because he is saddled 
with paper work. Indeed, his clothes except for his boots, give the impression of a leisurely businessman. Kier-
nan wears an ascot, blue pants 
and sports shirt and a Panama 
hat, which he wears to shield his face from the sun. However, his boots are rubber soled Š clearly 
a throwback to his early days in the business. Currently, he employs five fulltime workers. He used to hire seven and 12 to 16 during the 
busy season but finds it's hard to find good workers. "That's the number one prob-lem with this business finding good reliable workers. All I want is someone who will show up for work on time, work hard and has a basic knowledge of mechanics. But they are hard to find," he says. Kiernan's company provides lawn care, pruning, landscaping and sod installation. He serves 
commercial and residential cus-tomers in the Eastern Cleveland metropolitan area. Most of his residential cus-tomers live in Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, Beachwood and Orange, where home values 
range from $65,000 to $300,000. His residential customers pay from $1,500 to $4,000 annually for his services, which include mow-
ing, edging, flower bed work, fer-tilizing, applying insecticides, herbicides and fungicides, prun-ing and dethatching. Customers pay on a contrac-tual basis or by the hour. "Cus-
tomers on a contract usually de-mand more than those paying by the hour. The ones on the con-tract may find extra things that have to be done," Kiernan says. Besides his 40 residential, Kiernan services two hospitals, three commercial establish-ments and a park. American Green Corp., a subsidiary of The DiSanto Gen-eral Landscaping Co., is just two years old and a quarter of the 
way towards its goal of caring for 10 million square feet of lawns, according to Dennis DiSanto, an owner of the company. Currently, American Green Services 2.5 million square feet 
of lawns for its 575 customers. By 1981-82, DiSanto hopes to reach the 10-million mark. "We're not interested in opening up branches around the 
country. We feel there is plenty of business in the Northeastern Ohio, eastern Cuyahoga County area," he says. Explaining why goals are set in square feet and not numbers Robinson Don Ridgway McRitchie Leonard fim Ridgway American Green is choosy in its selection of customers. To cut down travel time, the company 
concentrates in customer build-ing efforts near its home base. After a crew finishes a job, they will hang American Green literature on door knobs of homes near the job site. "It helps stimulate business. But it isn't a tremendous help," DiSanto says. The company also uses direct mailings, which are very effec-tive, he says. The mailings are sent to areas where American Green currently services cus-tomers; it capitalizes on word-of-mouth advertising, from nearby customers, who may tell pros-
pective customers about the ser-
vices. DiSanto says American Green gets many of its customers from other branches of the corpora-tion who performed landscaping work and refer them to Ameri-can Green. Before a lawn care business-man takes on large commercial accounts, he should check his in-Anthony Chiancone surance policy to make sure he has sufficient liability and per-sonal injury coverage, says Frank Soos, 60, who maintains commer-cial lawns primarily. His two commercial custom-ers are U.S. Steel and Ohio Bell; they have 34 different sites for which Soos provides mowing, flower bed work and shrub prun-
ing. Both customers require that lawn care businessmen have substantial insurance coverage. A dabbling in weed control and an interest in getting into a growing business started Robert Drown, a pest control operator, 
on his lawn care career. Drown owns both Reliable Pest Control and Reliable Lawn Service, Inc., Brook Park. Two 
years ago, he entered the lawn care business and provides lawn spraying, lawn maintenance and landscaping, with the big empha-sis on lawn spraying. "For a pest control operator to get into the lawn business, he should have some horticultural 
experience so he can tell the 
difference between dollar spot and another disease," Drown 
says. Another must is hiring some-one with lawn care experience. Reliable employs a man with landscaping and forestry service experience, who is a big asset. Finally, he suggests that the newcomer to lawn care stay in-formed by reading Drown's previous business background in 
employe managing, customer relations, accounting, equip-ment knowledge and supply pur-
chasing carried over to the lawn care field. As of yet, the lawn spray busi-ness has not been very profit-able, Drown says. Although his number of cus-tomers doubled this year over last year, most of the additional income is plowed back into the business for equipment pur-chases and a new truck. This is to be expected when starting a lawn care business, he says. "I'm glad I got into the busi-ness two years ago. There is a good profit to be made here. If I'd waited until this year, I would not have started because the market is filling up. In a few years, there will be price wars," he says. He has 250 residential and 25 commercial customers taking his 
four-application lawn spray pro-gram. It includes fertilizer, pre-
emergence herbicides, insecti-cides and fungicides if needed. Also, he has 10 lawn mainte-nance accounts, which are not 
very profitable. Reliable pro-Tom Brunner Mike Brunner vides mowing, dethatching and pruning. The most profitable part of his business is lawn spraying, particularly those customers with 5,000 square feet lawns and smaller, which account for 65 percent of his business. Drown limits his area of oper-ation to western suburbs, includ-ing Strongsville, Parma, Brook 
Park, Berea, North Olmsted and Olmsted Falls. The area's aver-
age market value for homes is $60,000. Currently, he has one spray truck and a pick with a tank. The lawn care business has one full-time and three parttime em-ployes. This year Tom Brunner, 27, doubled his lawn care accounts and credits 60 to 65 percent of the account increase to a door-to-
door leafleting campaign in 
areas, where he had customers last year. "We concentrated in five areas where we had accounts last year and did one leaflet-
ing," Brunner says. "If you're do-ing a good job in the area, word 
gets around, and you'll build cus-
tomers." The leafleting campaign was conducted in late March, un-usually late, because Cleve-land's long winter dulled peo-ple's thoughts of spring time and lawn care. "Timing is important. You have to catch the people at the right time, when they are thinking about lawn care," he 
says. Brunner's leaflet gave the name of his company, Personal Lawn Care, Rocky River, the ser-
vices offered and phone num-bers to call for free estimates. He estimated the printing cost at $200 for 5,000 leaflets. Of the 2,000 leaflets distributed, about 
35 to 45 new customers were ad-ded. Personal Lawn Care has 90 
customers taking chemical treat-ment and 65 lawn mowing ac-counts, all are in western sub-
urbs. Next year Brunner plans to leaflet the same area as this year's campaign. Brunner became interested in lawn care, while studying natu-ral resources at Ohio State Uni-versity, Columbus. He started 
working for O. M. Scott and Sons Co., which was opening a lawn care business in Columbus. He later transferred to Balti-more, where he was a Scott sales manager in lawn care. However, Scott folded its Baltimore oper-ations, and Brunner started his own lawn care business, Per-sonal Lawn Care in Baltimore. to page 22 $ z n > w Z a c </> H X Rich Chiancone of customers, he says, "Some of our customers have five-acre es-tates, others are condominiums. We are not interested in num-bers of customers because this can mean a lot of 7,000-square 
feet lawns. We are interested in 
quantity of space." American Green was formed in 1976 as a bookkeeping proce-
dure to separate the lawn care's 
dollars and cents from the com-pany's other enterprises, includ-ing interior and exterior land-scaping, sod installation and maintenance. It also signaled a heavier push into the lawn care area. Its program is a four-part application using dry fertilizers and insecticides and liquid 
broadleaf control. Dry applica-tions are made with push Cy-clone spreaders and spreaders dragged by tractors for larger 
jobs. Besides its chemical applica-tion service, DiSanto Landscap-
ing cares for 90 residential and 50 commercial lawns. American Green has 500 resi-dential customers taking the application service and 75 commercial. The residential cus-tomers live in affluent eastern suburbs including Shaker 
Heights, Moreland Hills, Pepper Pike, Solon, Gates Mills and Warrensville Heights. Estimating the size of most customer's lawns, he says 75 per-cent are over 15,000 square feet. The company charges $44 per application for a 15,000-square-feet lawn. Drown (right) and employe Wayne Baldwin An early lawn care career start The distinction of being Cleveland's " youngest lawn care businessman goes to Mike Cullinan, the 22-year-old owner of Green Grass Lawn Service in the western suburb of Rocky River. He doesn't how-ever, beat out 22-year-old Rick Jesse of Perma-Green in Chesterland by much Š just a few months. Cullinan, a former high school and col-lege defensive end (he played his high school ball at Cleveland's St. Edward, a perennial city power), started his busi-ness mowing neighborhood lawns in his teens. The while taking a marketing course at Cleveland State University, he wrote a paper titled ''Marketing in the Fertilizer Service Industry." The 29-page paper became the prototype for his full-time business today, which has 14 em-ployes, four trucks and 140 accounts. And 
oh yes, he got an "A" on the paper. PRODUCTS Soil colorimeter LaMotte Chemical Products Co. introduces the model TRL-12 Soil Colorimeter Outfit, featuring a battery-powered meter for precise analysis of soil nutrition factors. The outfit also includes battery powered meters for pH 
and dissolved salts measure-
ments. A simple extraction pro-cedure provides the liquid soil extract used for measuring am-
monia, calcium, chloride, cop-per, iron, magnesium, manga-
nese, nitrate, nitrite, phos-
phorus, potassium, sulfate and zinc. Circle 201 on free information card Power burst mower The new Power Burst Mower from Jacobsen Manufacturing Co. offers a 3Vi-horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine, recoil start, 20-inch die cast aluminum Aerates 18 inches wide Not found in stores, sold factory direct to save you money. Good engineering + sim-ple design Š low price. Powered by 2 hp Briggs Stratton engine . .. aerates % to 1 Vi inches deep . .. Very easy to control ... Works in hard to get at places ... Safe and easy to operate. Engine warranted for 90 
days . .. Gear train & tines carry 1 full year 
warranty ... try one for 15 days ... your money back if not fully satisfied. Can be used as a tiller to weed beds and shrubs from 6 to 18 inches in width. One of the most versatile lawn-garden machines money can buy . . . Built by Company with 30 yrs. experience in the manufacture of tough dependable tools. For full information write to: mower deck with wash out port, adjustable folding handle. A touch of the Power Burst control bar and a surge of reserve engine power is provided to handle tall, tough or lush grass. Circle 202 on free information card Tractor offers front, rear power take-off Kubota Tractor Corp. introduces the B5100, the newest addition to its line of diesel-powered, water-cooled tractors. The new 12-horsepower, two-cylinder Kubota has an engine displace-ment of 31 cubic inches, six for-ward and two reverse speeds, and comes with two-speed rear power take-off and optional front power take-off. Additional stan-
dard equipment includes a full hydraulic system, mechanical shoe type brakes, and engine 
hour meter and a Category 1 three-point hitch. Circle 203 on free information card Feed trees for 2 years Sierra Chemical Co. has an-nounced introduction of a con-venient fertilizer probe for use with long-lasting Agriform Fertil-Weighs 51 lbs. Very easy to use. izer Tablets. The steel probe is used to punch holes around the drip line of a tree. Then the tablets are dropped into the root zone. The company said the tablets can fertilize a four-inch diameter tree for two full years for less than $1. Circle 204 on free information card Fiberglass handle lopper Corona Clipper Co. has included a selection of loppers in its line designed for professional use. The new no. 325 Lopper is es-pecially appreciated by profes-sionals due to the resiliency of its fiber glass handles; this tool may be used constantly with con-siderably less fatigue. The han-dles are bolted on to a drop forged cutting head. Circle 205 on free information card Artificial turf cover for impact sprinklers A rubber cover with bonded arti-ficial turf is now available for KW50, K60, K70, K80 and K90 im-pact drive rotary heads manu-factured by Weather-matic 
Division/Telsco Industries. The Turf Top is a K-series rubber cover with "Super Turf" bonded to it. Circle 206 on free information card Cordless grass trimmer has nylon line/blade The model 8260 cordless nylon line/blade grass trimmer manu-factured by Black and Decker Manufacturing Co., cut with either tough nylon blade or line; the nylon blade is for cutting large open areas, the nylon line for trimmer lighter growth in hard-to-reach places; a recharge-able nickel-cadmium battery pack is powerful and reliable, running up to 40 minutes on a single charge; and bail handle adjusts for height of user. Circle 207 on free information card Sensor controls irrigation valves Hydro-Dynamics is marketing its Hydrovisor Š a patented solid-state sensor that measures root stress and controls automatic irrigation valves. They deliver water as needed to trees, shrubs or grass in any type soil, to insure optimum growth while conserv-
ing water. Completely weather-
proof and temperature-resistant, the sensors install easily to ex-isting control clock wires for 
electric valves which operate at 24-30 volts AC. One unit super-
vises up to three valves at once, 
preventing irrigation when root stress is low and automatically opening the valves when tension exceeds 20-30 centibars. Circle 208 on free information card International publishes seed data sheets International Seeds, Inc. has published a series of informative seed data sheets that explain the many varieties available from 
the company and a distributor list of where to buy them throughout the country. Information is available on: Derby perennial ryegrass; High-light fine fescue, a shade-tolerant grass; Emerald creep-
ing bentgrass; Derby perennial ryegrass, which germinates in six 
to 12 days; Dixie Green over-seeding mixture; Penncross creeping bentgrass; Sabre turf-type Poa trivialis, for cool-season turfgrass areas under shady, cool, moist conditions; Scenic Kentucky bluegrass; Ensylva 
creeping red fescue, which has good leaf spot resistance and tolerates low mowing. Circle 209 on free information card Flail mowers with 42 to 84-inch cuts Vemco Corp. of America an-nounces its series of flail mowers with different knife styles for fine cutting, rough cutting or 
dethatching. The unit adapts to 
right- or left-hand drive power take-off shafts. It is available in a standard series, which includes 42-inch, 48-inch and 60-inch cut-Remarkable new machine will add thousands to your profits each year. I" DERBY TILLER COMPANY I P.O. Box 21 | Rumson, New Jersey 07760 | I want more information | | Name | | Street | I City j ^ State Zip | I Visa-Bank Americard & Master Charge I orders accepted by phone Mon-Sat 9-5. ^ Call (201) 741-0601 DERBY POWERED AERATOR Weighs 51 lbs. ... aerates V4 to IV* inches deep ... con bt operated very effectively by young inexperienced help. ting widths, fitting most 12-30 horsepower tractors. It is also available in a heavy duty series, with 60-inch, 72-inch and 84-inch cutting widths, fitting most 30-60 horsepower tractors. Circle 210 on free information card Lawn colorant A new lawn and plant colorant called Perma-Green is now avail-able from International Research Union, Inc. The colorant was developed in Cali-fornia for dry conditions and high traffic areas. It is applied using a tank-type sprayer, and most color shades can be matched by simple dilution with ordinary water. Circle 211 on free information card New no-drift herbicide applicator Vandermolen Corp. announces availability of the new model BP27 no-drift herbicide appli-cator, featuring a 5V2-gallon high density polyethylene tank with carbon black. The carbon black in the tank offers two benefits: it prevents the ultraviolet rays of sunlight from deteriorating the polyethylene, and (2) it prevents decomposition of chemicals af-fected by ultraviolet radiation. The Driftmaster applies weed killer to the ground by a ribbed roller right alongside shrubbery or flower beds with no pos-sibility of drift onto adjacent plants. The herbicide is applied evenly and exactly where the operator wants it. The roller coats and flattens the entire weed surface, putting more chemical on the weed than sprayers do, the company said. Circle 212 on free information card Gypsum ups return on landscaping dollar Regular use of SOF'N-SOIL gyp-sum, a product of U.S. Gypsum Co., maximizes the return on every landscaping dollar spent by helping the professional get the most value out of each bag of fertilizer, gallon of water and pound of seed, the company said. Applied in spring, the gypsum improves soils that are dense and water-impervious by helping fer-tilizers to work more effectively. Fall application protects against the harmful effects of winter de-icing salt on grass, shrubs, trees and trees growing along streets and sidewalks. Grass growth regulator introduced by 3M Co. A versatile grass control regu-lator for slowing the growth of various turfgrasses and broad-
leaf vegetation has been intro-duced by 3M Co. Further free information is available on Em-bark 2-S plant growth regulator, which has been granted full reg-istration this year by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (see LAWN CARE IN-DUSTRY, May, 1978, page 2). 
When applied uniformly as a spray, Embark will reduce mow-ing requirements for a minimum of five to eight weeks. Embark may be applied to localized areas with small spray units, or to larger areas with conventional equipment. Application rates are IV2 pints per acre for Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue, and four pints per acre for common bermudagrass in dilutions of 15 to 50 gallons of water. Circle 214 on free information card 500- to 1,500-gallon skid-mounted tank units Raven Industries, Inc. an-nounces its new series of skid-mounted tank units in sizes of 
500, 1,000 and 1,500 gallons. Features include: lightweight, high strength fiber glass that is chemical and corrosion resistant; the 48-inch, 500-gallon tank in-cludes one 10-inch fillwell with cover, two nylon drain fittings 
and gallonage indicator; the 48-inch, 1,000-gallon tank includes one center baffle, 10-inch fill-well with cover, two nylon drain fittings and gallonage indicator. Further information is avail-able. Circle 215 on free information card Floating mower deck offered on riding mowers Ariens introduces two new 10 horsepower riding mowers. The model 1038R and model 1030R are equipped with all the stan-dard Ariens features and also of-
fer the "Flex-N-Float Plus" 
mower deck which provides op-timum cutting action without scuffing or scalping due to vary-ing contours of the lawn. Cutting widths range from 26 inches on 
the five horsepower and seven 
horsepower models to 30 inches on the eight horsepower models and the new 1030R model. The 
model 1038R has a full cutting width of 38 inches. Circle 216 on free information card New lawn aerator weighs 150 pounds A new, self-propelled turf 
aerator, which can be used in landscaping or contract lawn maintenance work, has been introduced by the Ryan Equip-ment Co. The three horsepower 
unit is nearly 60 percent lighter than previous coring aerators built by Ryan. It weighs 150 pounds. The unit features a frainable 6.6-gallon capacity barrel to increase aerating 
weight by 55 pounds when filled with water. The barrel Š treated to inhibit rust Š is licated slightly ahead of the tines to pro-vide coring penetration up to 2Vz inches deep. The new machine can aerate up to 150 feet per minute in 19-inch swaths. Circle 217 on free information card We stand out like a green thumb. Because we're the only magazine to reach the entire residential lawn care service industry. This is a growth market of 8,000 companies selling chemical lawn care and maintenance services to the 45 million home owner/ residential turf market in the U.S. A market with a 25% growth last year. And $1.25 billion in sales. And we hit the top management. Stand out in the one magazine covering the fastest growing service industry in North America. Join us. Contact: 
Steve Stone Nat'l. Ad Director 757 Third Avenue New York, New York 10017 (212) 421-1350 A Harvest Business Publication. Subsidiary of Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Inc. WWN GIRE INDUSTRY Flail Safety Cut your grass and cut your risks with Mott flail safe mowers. Lightweight, free-swinging flail knives yield when striking objects, reducing the force of impact. Their vertical mode of operation, the guard action of the roller, and the deflecting features of. the cutter housing all combine to make Mott mowers safer. Cutting widths from 38 to 88 inches and gangs to 19 feet. Mott mowers have Long Life ^ | Durability and for you that means Best Value Purchase Circle 104 on free information card BEHIND THIS ISSUE The staff of LAWN CARE INDUSTRY had a busy month. The Marketplace feature on Cleveland (see page 14) took many hours both during the day and at night for myself and assistant editor Mike Casey. There are a lot of lawn care companies in Cleveland. Sitting in the plush east side offices of Nick Licursi and Joe Matulis on the morning of our first interview, all talk and business came to a halt when the new 1978-79 Yellow Pages were delivered at 11:30. We couldn't break for an ordered-out pizza lunch until the list of new and old companies had been scoured by the two lawn care busi-nessmen. For the record, there are 76 companies listed in this 
year's "Lawn Maintenance" section, as opposed to 64 last year. Technical editor Ron Morris also had one busy afternoon last month sitting in for an hour-long call-in program at a local radio station. The subject was, of course, lawn care. Ron, 29-year-old graduate of the turf program at Purdue University, fielded all questions flawlessly. If the picture is a little dark, blame it on the cramped radio control booth Ron, not me. By the way, do you want five extra copies for your mother? While interviewing Cleveland lawn care businessmen, we also came across two of our front-page business charts tacked on the 
wall of Lawnco president Al Dall. Al's business growth figures 
immediately to the right of the chart reflect the great growth that is taking place in the Cleveland lawn care market. Even though we were busy this month, all the work is not with-out its rewards. We found that Cleveland lawn care businessmen are not above tipping a cold one or two on a hot spring or summer day. And we really needed something to wet our parched throats after all those hours of interviewing. ADVERTISERS INDEX Deere & Co 6-7 Derby Tiller Co 20 Dountz Equipment Co 9 Dow Chemical Co 3 Du Pont Co 12-13 Essco Mfg. Co 10 Great Salt Lake Mineral & Chemical Co 5 Hanson Equipment Co 8 Jacobsen Mfg. Co 24 
MottCorp 21 Satoh Tractor 11 CLASSIFIED When answering ads where box number only is given, please address as follows: Box number, c/o LAWN CARE IN-DUSTRY, Dorothy Lowe, Box 6951 Cleveland, Ohio 44101. Rates: 35c a word for line ads, 65c a word for display ads. Box numbers add $1 for mailing. All classified ads must be received by the publisher before the 10th of the month preceding publication and be accompanied by casn or money order covering full payment. Mail aa copy to Dorothy Lowe LAWN 
CARE INDUSTRY, Box 6951, Cleveland, 
Ohio 44101 HELP WANTED BRANCH MANAGER Š National automated lawn service in franchise market seeks experienced in-dividual to start ana head up com-pany areas. Tremendous growth potential for one presently with li-quid spray management experience. Send confidential resume to Lawn Doctor, Inc., P.O. Box 186, Conover 
Road, Wickatunk, N.J. 07765. FOR SALE FOR SALE: Stainless steel lawn-combine. Excellent condition. Seeds, fertilizers, aerates, rolls and sprays from 50 gallon tank, at 600 square feet per minute. $2,500 or best offer. Serious inquiries only. Send in-quiries to Box 5, Lawn Care Industry, Box 6951, Cleveland, Ohio 44101. CHEMICAL LAWN SERVICE in southeastern area will top $450,000 volumn in Bermuda-Zoysia market. Five application program. Excellent reputation. Inquire Box 6, Lawn Care Industry, Box 6951, Cleveland, Ohio 44101. Cleveland from page 19 Brunner still owns the Baltimore operation. A native of the Cleveland area, he and his wife, who have two children, wanted to return to his hometown and open up a lawn care business. Comparing the Cleveland market to Baltimore, he says, "In Baltimore there is a big need with fewer companies. Cleve-land has a more saturated market with more chemical and lawn care companies. It also has plenty of demand, we've doubled our work in a year." The move to Cleveland has meant additional capital expenditures and labor expenses for Personal Lawn Care. In Balti-more Brunner did all of his own work, here he employs five per-sons. Five men Š three of them schoolteachers Š started Spra-Gro, Inc. last year based in sub-urban Bedford, and they have 
been making full-time money on part-time hours. But very long 
part-time hours, to be sure. The four are Don Ridgway, 46, president; Ken McRitchie, 38; Gordon McRitchie, 33; and Jerry Leonard, 29; and Jim Ridgway, 23; all vice presidents. "We got the idea two years ago," Don 
Ridgway told LAWN CARE IN-
DUSTRY. "We saw ChemLawn doing it and it didn't look too complicated, so we decided to give it a try." They started with two spray tank trucks and now have four and one small service vehicle. The tanks on their various trucks have 200, 300, 1,000 and 1,200 
capacities. They had about 900 customers at the beginning of the 
year, and hope to have 1,300 by the end of this lawn care season. Kurt Kluznik, 24, started his Yardmaster business as a land-scape operation six years ago. Last year he started a liquid lawn spray division with his partner Rick Colwell, and brought in 
Nate Robinson to manage the division. They had 500 lawn care ac-counts last year, started this season with 1,400, and hope to build up their list to 2,400 by the end of the year. They distributed 150,000 brochures from the far west side of the Cleveland metropolitan area to the far east side. They are based in Mentor on the east side in Lake County. They also utilized billboard advertising this year. "It cost us $150 a month to rent a billboard space," Kluznik said, "and it works great because it helps give us a national image. It is hard to measure the response in customers, but if you get the right location, it just has to help your image." Their minimum charge is $16 for 3,000 square feet of lawn. The charge goes up $2.60 for each 1,-000 square feet after that, to about $28.30 for their typical 8,000-square-foot lawn. They are hoping to have 5,000 customers by the end of next year's lawn care season. Anthony Chiancone and his son Rich operate Anthony J. Chiancone Landscape and Nur-sery, Inc., in South Euclid. They have a crew of about 50 persons working at peak times of the year, about 30 of which are in-volved in maintenance. Tom Agresta and Joe Guzik head up the maintenance crews for the Chiancones. "Maintenance is a valuable tool to keep the cash flow situa-
tion up," Anthony Chiancone 
told LAWN CARE INDUSTRY. "We try to pick up the mainte-nance on the jobs that we install." Among their maintenance jobs are the reknowned Cleveland Clinic on Cleveland's University Circle, Case Western Reserve University, Diamond Shamrock facilities in Concord Township, the Front Row theater in Highland Heights, B.F. Good-
rich and many more. Rick Jesse, 22, started Perma-Green in Chesterland to the east 
of Cleveland this lawn care season. He believes in what he calls a "rifle approach" in adver-tising and promotion of his ser-vices. "We sent out 3,000 flyers and 500 personally addressed letters this year to carefully selected areas of the city," he said. At pre-sent they have 18 mowing ac-counts and 50 fertilizer spray ac-counts. He is concentrating his work for his three-man crew in the more affluent suburbs of Cleveland such as Pepper Pike, 
Chardon Newbury and the Chagrin Valley area in general. Lets get down to grass facts! Average business increase 25% 1978 vs. 1977 More than 8,000 businesses have emerged Š almost over night Š to serve the wants and needs of the 45 million home owners in the residential turf and ornamental market. Last year these businesses served over 4 million accounts, produced $1.25 billion in receipts and a 25% growth. These facts make it clear that chemical lawn care and maintenance services are booming 
businesses today... and have just scratched the surface of the huge residential market. If you've Housing starts on the upswing in 1978 been trying to sell this emerging service industry, we don't have to tell you how difficult it's been to reach. Now at last there is a magazine that delivers this exclusive audience. Now for the first time you can communicate with this growth market. Now you can match your message to the market. L4WN OIRE INDUSTRY A Harvest business publication. lawn care...the growingest market How to spend less time lubricating and more time mowing with gang mowers. It's so easy you'll wonder why all mowers aren't made like Jacobsen makes them. And that's with a sealed housing design that requires lubrication only once a year. Not every time you use the mowers. Just once a year. Which is one good reason why you see so many Jacobsen gang mowers out cutting turf instead of being out for lube jobs. Another reason you see so many Jacobsen gang mowers out there is because we make so many of them. In fact, we offer the world s most complete line. It includes (and it's quite a list): Fairway gang mowers with your choice of 5, 6 or 10-blade units. In 3, 5, 7, 9 or 11-gang pull behind combinations. With adjustable cutting heights. Plus Blitzer gang mowers (for rougher turf) with 4 or 5 blade units, and bigger 10" reels. In 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11-gang combinations. With adjustable cutting heights. And here's another Jacobsen exclusive. For quick parallel alignment of bed knife ends, simply turn two adjustment knobs by hand. Both Fairway and Blitzer units offer you three different wheel styles. Steel, semi-pneumatic and pneumatic, each in two sizes. Yet another _ _ Jacobsen exclusive. Then, there's our Ram Lift Ranger frame for 3 or 5 gang units. The reels raise and lower hydraulically. And 5, 7 and 9-gang mowing tractors to top it off. Ask your Jacobsen Distributor for a demonstration. He'll show you a whole line of gang mowers that do more mowing and less getting ready for it than anything you've ever seen. Jacobsen Manufacturing Company. Racine. Wisconsin 53403 An Allegheny Ludlum Industries Company