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With the right attachments, skid steers, compact track loaders and other machines in your fleet can be adapted for expansion into the landscaping business. This can include branching out into restoration and rehabilitation work, or offering a complimentary addition to existing earthmoving services.

Landscaping attachments come in a variety of types, ranging from basic attachments such as forks, six-way dozer blades and buckets to specialty tools such as rakes, augers, backhoes and soil preparators. Following are examples of how several contractors have taken advantage of such tools to build their business and expand the ROI of their existing equipment fleet.

Landscaping adds revenue
Ratliff Landscape & Excavation, Flippin, AR, made the leap into landscaping a couple of years ago. The company is 10 years old and its owner, Jody Ratliff, has 31 years of experience in the excavation business. The equipment fleet consists of a dozer, backhoe, 1-ton pickup and two skid-steer loaders — a late-1990s model JCB and a new Case 410.

The firm's main focus has been earthmoving. "We have tried to specialize in watershed problems," says Ratliff. "We are a small business."

The decision to expand into landscaping was not easy. "We kind of fought against the idea of going into landscaping, mainly because it seemed tedious and I wasn't sure that the money was there," recalls Ratliff.