VersaHandler V518 Helps Snow Removal Contractor Exceed Expectations
After 15 years in the snow removal business, Rick Johnson and Matt Main know the importance of meeting the demands of their dozen or so commercial clients.
The two owners of Mulch Mart in Waukee, Iowa, rely on a team of subcontractors and equipment to go above and beyond their clients' expectations. In addition to the skid-steer loaders, pickup trucks and dump trucks that head out to clear the parking lots and sidewalks, Johnson and Main added a V518 VersaHandler telescopic tool carrier. That machine serves two purposes: it helps plow snow in the winter and load mulch in the spring and summer.
Mulch Mart clears snow for some of the most well-known commercial businesses in the Des Moines area. When it snows overnight, their customers don't have to worry about whether the plows showed up because they've usually come and gone before their first employees arrive. "Our customers want it perfect," Johnson says. "They want their sidewalks to be wet, and they want their lots to be pushed so that they don't lose one parking spot."
Johnson and Main rely on nearly 100 seasonal subcontractors who specialize in other work during warmer months. "You might have a guy who owns a concrete company who has four or five Bobcat skid-steer loaders sitting there in the winter. So when it snows, we call him and he likes it because his machines are working," Main says. "He also makes his staff happy because it gives them work to do in the winter. It's good for us and good for them."
Placing snow
The telescopic tool carrier goes out on every snow removal job. Johnson and Main added the V518 after diversifying in 2005 with the purchase of a wholesale mulch business. With the addition of the mulch store, they knew they would be able to utilize the telehandler year round.
Johnson and Main say they chose a telehandler over a skid-steer loader because they needed the power and 18-ft. reach to push snow on the large commercial lots and unload heavy pallets of mulch. "With skid-steer loaders, you can only reach so high," Johnson says. The V518 enables operators to strategically place snow on a jobsite and push back snow piles to make room for new snow. In warm weather months, it can easily pull out heavy pallets of mulch from a semi-trailer truck without needing a dock, and fill dump trucks with bulk mulch in less than half the time.
Snow removal challenges
A trend toward increased emphasis on landscaping has made snow removal more challenging in recent years. Before, there were many open spaces on a commercial lot that snow removal contractors could place plowed snow. But that's not so today. Where there was once a flat piece of ground where you could place a lot of snow, there's now a berm with trees and bushes.
"That's where the telehandler really shines because you can dump the snow where it really needs to go, which you cannot do with most pieces of equipment," Johnson says. For example, instead of pushing snow so it rests against inline trees, Mulch Mart crews have used the V518 to pick up snow and dump it on the other side of the trees, which prevents the weight of the snow from damaging and bending the trees' small trunks.
Johnson and Main like the V518's maximum speed of 18.4 mph when traveling from jobsite to jobsite, and their crews appreciate the machine's enclosed cab with heat and air conditioning. Another reason they purchased the telehandler was because it packed a large amount of power in a small package, enabling crews to access areas they coudn't with another machine. For instance, when needing to plow the top level of a commercial parking ramp, Johnson says crews can simply drive the V518 up the ramp without worrying about ground clearance. "It can get into a ramp and boom snow out off the opening of the ramp," he says.
Keeping Mulch Mart efficient
Mulch Mart stocks more than a dozen varieties of bagged mulch and bulk mulch that are delivered from all over the country. The store's four full-time employees use the V518 to unload the palletized bags of mulch when they arrive on semi-trailer trucks. But not having docks at the mulch store made unloading the pallets labor-intensive and time-consuming. Prior to purchasing the telehandler, Johnson and Main say their employees would have to use a hand jack to bring the pallets to the front of the semi-trailer truck in order for a skid-steer loader to then reach and unload them. Now, with pallet forks attached to the V518, crews can reach into the back of a semi-trailer truck and easily pull out pallets. "And the guys like the crab-steer mode on the machine because it allows them to get in just close enough to the vehicle for precise loading," Main says.
Mulch Mart crews also save time when loading bulk mulch into dump trucks with the 31⁄4-cubic yard light material bucket on the V518. Instead of making 10 trips with a skid-steer loader bucket, Johnson says crews can fill a dump truck in less than half the time with the high-volume light material bucket because they only need to make three trips to the bulk pile.
Whether it's winter or summer, the V518 telescopic tool carrier is always at work. That's why Johnson and Main both say there's no denying that the machine has been a sound investment that will help their businesses' future growth.
"It's a nice machine that probably does more than what we expected it to do," Main says. "Once we got it, we were like, 'Wow, it does what they told us it would do and then some.'"