We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Thomas Parsons . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Thomas below.

Alright, Thomas thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

The reason I got stared in what I do today is because I got laid off from my job and a had always wanted to have my own business but was never able to do so. I got stared in business by a local guy that I knew who was a very well known business man in our town who I had known for years prior. He bought the machine for me and when I didn’t have work he gave me some work that he needed done. I wanted to provide a company that could restore properties to a usable condition, and do it in a way not to disturb the ground anymore then needed and once the property was cleaned up maintain the property afterwards.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are a landclearing and excavating company that can clear any property and can do any type of excavating work. Our company specializes in invasive species control, Clearing for new homes, complete utility installation, road/driveway construction and maintenance, and we built atvtrails, and we do it in manner that helps the environment thrive.

When i first thought of the ideal, it had always been a dream to start a business and work for my self, but was never in any position to be able to start anything, due to money, family responsibilities and other things. In 2015 I was laid off at my job and went to work for a local guy, that didn’t work out real well and I went to work for another friend of mine. This fellow was was a well known, long time business owner and was very successful.
He gave me the opportunity, in 2017 he bought the first machines, which was a used track skidsteer and forestry mulcher, that i needed to start the kind of business that I wanted to get into, which is land clearing and excavating. The reason for this type of business was because no one else was really doing the clearing land with the special type of equipment i was using. After acquiring the first machine, I started advertising locally and using Facebook to advertise. Facebook had a huge help in getting us business, and word of mouth helped as well. The first year we didn’t do hardly any work as could be expected, but I did do a couple jobs, the hardest part was trying to market this type of service because no one knew what it did.
After doing a couple jobs I started getting ideals of what type of services I could add to help make the company grow. Instead of just clearing underbrush, I stared using the skidsteer to build atv trails and do driveway maintenance. The second year 2018, I got more jobs and by the end of the second year I had done several jobs. The third year, I picked up a used brushog that I could use the cut over grown fields which allowed me to offer another service. That same year I was able to aquire a used mini excavator which really opened up the services that I could offer and by the third year I had started picking up repeat customers, which I still have some of the very first customers to this day.
During this time I had tried to set ourselves up to try to be the only ones in our areas with such specialized equipment for clearing land in a way we did. During the third year 2019, we had enough work that I needed to hire my first employee. We had aquired a couple bigger jobs and we stared getting very good at finding ways to be more efficient and learning little tricks that made us stand out. We also stared getting into doing little bit of excavating jobs, they were small but they helped us get more work. By the end of 2019, we bought our very first new machines, I sold the used mini excavator and got a new one and we got a brand new track skidsteer and mulcher had. This year we had work that went over into the next year.
2020 brought on me challenges because the new skidsteer couldn’t stay out of the shop, we had so much work that we couldn’t keep up. I bought another brand machine in May of that year and after that my employee and I was able to do as much work as we could. With the amount of work we had we were able to aquire another truck to help move equipment, that year we were able to purchase the first machine from the guy who helped us get stated. In the fall of 2020, we bought a 3rd skidsteer and mulcher, and we bought anything truck to haul our equipment.
During the winter of 2021, I kept advertising and trying to find ways to spread the word of our company like I had been doing sense 2017. That year we hired 2 more guys and bought a new mini excavator and we had gotten more into excavating jobs, eventually we would end up buying yet another excavator. We started working out of town traveling an hour or more from home, By this time we had built up a good list of repeat customers and had a sizeable list of work starting out that year. We also saw a few other land clearing company’s start up locally I thought in the beginning that we would notice a slow down in work but that didn’t happen, we had done some of the biggest jobs our company had ever done and we hired another guy to help us.
We kept advertising and taking ads on Facebook and in 2022, we had another year that turned out to be a very busy year. We added more attachments for the track hoes and skidsteers, we bought a bulldozer and bought 3 pickup trucks for our guys to drive. Meanwhile we kept focus on the excavating work and trying to have the best specialized equipment for clearing property on all of our area.
2023 present time, we bought more equipment that put us in a better position to better serve our customers, and like the years past we have a bunch of work to get thru this year. As of now we have 5 guys that work for us 3 skidsteers, 3 excavators, a whole tree chipper, a dozer, a tractor/brushog, 3 trucks to haul our equipment, 2 dumptrucks, 3 trailers, many attachments and 7 pickup trucks.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When we stared this business we stared out with nothing, a friend bought the equipment, another friend loaned me his trailer to haul the machine, I traded in my pickup for another truck that was big enough to move the machine from job to job. Now we have enough trucks, trailers, and equipment to tackle any type of jobs that we can do, and we did it in 6 years.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

We bought new equipment with the exception of it running without issues but we quickly learned that was not true. With all the government restrictions on equipment the machines are unreliable, over priced and the parts are next to impossible to get. We have trouble finding good reliable people to work and that wants to work. We could use 3 more employees that would work but last year we went thru 16 people that either couldn’t do what they said they could or just would not show up.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: Parsons Land Clearing and Services