North Carolina contractor grinds throgh larger jobs for fewer clients.

By Tara Deering

Going from 70 clients to only four typically wouldn’t be viewed as a good thing by most site preparation contractors. But when your average job size goes from clearing only a few acres to as many as 150 acres, four major clients will do just fine.

That’s what happened to Chris Philemon, owner of CD Philemon Grading & Trucking Inc., based in Monroe, NC. Philemon began his business a decade ago as a one-man operation. His company consisted of himself and a loader. He admits the going was rough in the beginning because he had a hard time finding business and financing to expand his company. But things soon changed.

“We started out mostly clearing small house lots and putting in driveways for residential customers, but then graduated into clearing larger lots,” Philemon says. “In the last five years, there have been basically four customers that I deal with day in and day out.”

Philemon now works with major developers who need land cleared to build everything from warehouses and manufacturing plants to hundreds of homes for housing subdivisions. Many of these developers have multiple projects at a time that need CD Philemon Grading & Trucking’s service. Typically, Philemon’s team of 23 employees spends anywhere from two weeks to three months on one job. In fact, business has been so good in the past year that the company’s revenue has more than doubled.

Tackling Monroe Regional Airport
One of Philemon’s most recent jobs entailed clearing a 20-foot-wide, 5,000-foot-long right of way for the Monroe (NC) Regional Airport. Airport officials wanted the land cleared in order to erect a chain link fence around the property to keep people and animals off the grounds. It was a smaller job, but a difficult one nonetheless because Philemon’s crews had to clear three acres of land in less than desirable ground conditions.

“The airport land is bad,” Philemon says. “It was very difficult to get 20-foot-wide sections because the land is wet, sandy, and sloped, which is hard to operate equipment in.”

Philemon used two excavators, a dozer, an off-road truck, and a Vermeer TG525 tub grinder for the $20,000 job.

This isn’t Philemon’s first tub grinder. He purchased the Vermeer TG525 about a month ago, after a good friend in the business bragged about the one he owned. “My friend has a TG525 and he liked the way it worked,” Philemon says. “We’ve done several jobs together, and I was very impressed with the way his [TG525] operated.”

For the Monroe Regional Airport job, Philemon opted to use a 9-inch screen to produce more than 350 tons of finished material because it cuts faster than smaller screens. However, with most jobs, he says he uses smaller screens to grind the material. Philemon’s Vermeer TG525 has an all-new knife-type sizing screen that provides higher production with less wear, which helps in reducing operating costs. He used the machine’s full-rotation grapple to lift the large stumps and piles of brush and load them into the tub.

Typically, Philemon’s crews are able to clear three acres of land in about a day and a half with the tub grinder, but this particular job took a little more than three days to complete because of the airport’s difficult ground conditions.

After the material was cleared and cut for the 20-foot-wide sections, crews then spread the product 4 inches thick along the right of way to serve as ground cover. The large distance between the Duplex Drum hammermill and the conveyor, combined with the variable belt speed on the TG525 tub grinder, provided crews with quick removal of high-volume processed materials. And the machine’s belt conveyor reduced spillage.

With larger jobs between 50 to 100 acres, Philemon hauls the material back to his yard where it’s placed on the bare ground in 15-foot-tall, 150-foot-wide, and 3,000-foot-long windrows. The taller the windrow, the more it saves time and money by allowing him to process the materials without expanding the size of the composting site. The complete composting process lasts from six months to a year.

Philemon regrinds and screens the product after it has cooked to make a fine pulp, mulch, or compost product. When it comes time to sell the product, Philemon says he doesn’t need to advertise. “People usually have heard about us, or they see the piles and just stop by and ask to buy some,” he says. Depending on how clean the finished product turns out, Philemon charges anywhere from $4 to $10 per cubic yard.

Staying Productive
After owning the tub grinder for about a month, Philemon has logged about 100 hours on it. Philemon says he is impressed by the machine’s product features and plans to use the tub grinder even more in the coming months

“This tub grinder has been one of the best machines I’ve ever seen operate or work,” he says.

One of the reasons for the machine’s higher production is the duplex drum rotor, which features eight duplex hammers that cut 16 radial paths, for easier maintenance and lower operating costs.

There were several other factors important to Philemon when he decided to purchase a new tub grinder, including fuel economy and choosing a dealer that provided exceptional service, and who cares about his business.

“I’ve bought a lot of equipment from a lot of people, and there’s no one who’s been in contact with me like my Vermeer dealer,” he says. “They call me once a week to see how the equipment is working, and my dealer comes out to the job site to see it in action. I’ve been very impressed with that.”

Tara Deering is a technical writer with the Two Rivers Marketing Group in Des Moines, IA.

GEC - May/June 2005