When Barry Donohue wants a reminder of what has made his tree-care company a success, he can take a quick stroll to the office refrigerator.
Plastered all over its face are thank you notes from customers of Any Town Tree, which serves the Naples area in South Florida.
“Take pride in your company’s performance. You and your team are an excellent example of the American dream company.”
That’s one from a customer who is retired from the U.S. military.
Donohue doesn’t have to think hard to answer how he went from a one-employee company that started in a down economy to one that did $1.7 million in sales last year.
It was by making customer service No. 1.
“We want to give you more than what you pay for,” says Donohue, whose company does tree trimming, tree removal and stump grinding. “We want to make sure you’re happy.”
With a philosophy like that, it makes sense that he wants to be treated the same way. And it’s the customer service he receives from his local dealership that makes him a big fan of Vermeer.
In fact, it’s something he experienced before he bought his first Vermeer machine eight years ago. Donohue has been in the tree-care industry since he was in high school in the mid-1980s. He eventually owned a company in his native Long Island, N.Y., before moving to Florida.
He started Any Town Tree in Florida in late 2006. Eleven months in, his brush chipper broke down. Unable to work without a functioning brush chipper, he called the Vermeer sales representative who’d been trying to get him to switch brands. Soon, Donohue was operating his first Vermeer brush chipper.
“We have never purchased another brand since,” Donohue says.
Any Town Tree has three Vermeer BC1800XL brush chippers, an SC362 stump cutter and an SC652 stump cutter. He runs three crews on a workload that’s a healthy mix of residential and commercial accounts.
The crews use that equipment every day in what can be rugged work, but Donohue says Vermeer makes high-quality, durable products. That makes a big difference on the company’s profit margins.
“Vermeer by all means helps me with labor costs by letting us be more productive per man hour with their equipment,” Donohue says. “I could never do what I do in a day if it wasn’t for my Vermeer machines.”