HH&P’s Doosan DX225 excavator, purchased from Westchester Tractor, has proven to be a reliable workhorse at its wood waste recycling facility.
Hickory Homes & Properties Inc. (HH&P) was founded by Enrico Galli over 30 years ago (1986) in Westchester County, N.Y., as a real estate investment company. His son, Gilbert Galli turned it into a small-scale property maintenance company. Today, the company is operated by Enrico's grandchildren, Michael and Christopher Galli.
In 2006, Michael and Christopher took a long look at the landscaping and property maintenance company that their father had established and decided to start broadening their horizons. The first area of opportunity that they identified was developing a tree service for their existing customers. Westchester County is an affluent community neighboring New York City with many large estates. Between storm damage, pruning and clearing, customers were regularly inquiring about arborist referrals. The brothers made an investment in a chipper, a boom truck and a couple of extra employees and quickly found more work than they could handle.
(L-R) are Michael Galli, Hickory Homes & Properties; Andrew Prusinowski, Westchester Tractor; and Christopher Galli, Hickory Homes & Properties.
The chipper purchase, a Bandit model 200XP, was made at Westchester Tractor through Andrew Prusinowski, and it wasn't long before the Galli brothers found themselves back at the doors of Westchester Tractor to make another purchase. This time they were looking for a compact tractor loader backhoe, primarily for cleaning up after jobs and doing some light excavation. Their experience with Bandit and Westchester Tractor had been educational and positive and they found more of the same when they left with a Kubota L45 tractor loader backhoe.
From that point on, the company grew at a rapid clip.
Until this point, Mike and Chris had maintained full-time outside employment to guarantee financial security for their families. Mike was in the computer business and Chris served in law enforcement. It became obvious to them that the business had grown to the point that it could support their families and that the company and their employees needed their full-time attention.
As the company grew bigger, projects were tackled and larger pieces of equipment were purchased. Dump trucks for hauling materials, dumpsters for their own projects and for outside rentals, excavators for site clearing jobs, skid steers and snow removal equipment allowing them to bid on commercial snow removing projects.
Over the course of the next several years their equipment purchases from Westchester Tractor included:
- Bandit 200XP chipper
- Bandit 1590XP chipper
- Bandit 1890XP chipper
- Kubota L45 tractor loader backhoe
- Kubota KX57 excavator
- Kubota KX80 excavator
- New Holland LW170B 3-yard loader
- Doosan DX180 excavator
- Doosan DX225 excavator
- Towmaster trailer
HH&P also has used Westchester Tractor for many short-term and long-term equipment rentals.
For the Galli brothers, Westchester Tractor and Andrew Prusinowski is always their first choice.
"We use Andrew and his shop for a multitude of reasons — their parts availability, their close proximity, our relationship, and the quality of the brands that they represent."
HH&P's entire fleet of wood chippers are made up of Bandits from Westchester Tractor.
"Bandit has proven to be a very high-quality product. It is hand-built; it is overbuilt with no plastic used. Safety is a high consideration in their engineering, using horizontal feed rollers, which prevent materials from being swayed to the left and right during the feed process. It has proven to be a very low-maintenance machine that also has passed the test of time with us."
"We have rented other products, but when it comes to compact machines we always come back to Kubota. It is a very tight machine, the excavator attachments, particularly the thumbs are ideally suited for our type of operation. The hydraulics are smoother than any other machine we have rented, and the steel used on their blade is very heavy duty."
"As we have moved into heavier machines, Westchester Tractor has introduced us to the Doosan product, which has suited our needs well. Their hydraulic thumb design with joystick control is particularly well suited for our type of application."
A truck is fully loaded after a day's hard work.
Recently, HH&P opened an organic recycling facility in Brewster, N.Y. At this location, they are receiving logs, brush, wood chips and all types of organics and are producing mulch, topsoil and compost.
The centerpieces of the recycling operation are a Doosan DX225LC and Bandit Beast 3680 recycler, which can shred nearly any size tree in a single pass and create a quality mulch with a second pass, according to the manufacturer. HH&P is processing all of its wood and organic waste at this site and accepting organics from local contractors, arborists, and municipalities, and using the finished materials on its own projects and selling product wholesale to local nurseries.
For more information on Hickory Homes & Properties, visit www.hhpny.com.
For more information on Westchester Tractor, visit www.wtractor.com.
CEG
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