Jack Eike's Wood Duck Landscapes offers full-service landscaping, expanding to BluGrade Earthworks in 2021. Using DEVELON equipment for efficiency and innovative solutions, Eike's companies aim to be a one-stop shop for homeowners, showcasing his entrepreneurial spirit and dedication.
Photo courtesy of DEVELON
Wood Duck Landscapes uses a mini-excavator and compact track loader for many of its projects due to confined job sites and the many times operators are moving materials in tight spaces.
Jack Eike grew up idolizing his grandfather and the landscaping industry. His grandfather operated a tree farm in central Iowa, and it's where Eike's interest in outdoor design took root.
"I grew up helping my grandfather during the summers, and any school breaks that I had, I'd always come to Iowa and help gramps on the farm," Eike said. "As I got older, this naturally evolved into a career path. I began to think, ‘What am I really good at, and what do I want to do full-time?' Landscaping was a natural extension of the nursery I started with."
Splitting time between family in Texas and Iowa, Eike enjoyed being outdoors and helping grow plants at the tree nursery. Soon he felt a call to pursue a career in landscaping. After he graduated from high school in 2019, he and his father started Wood Duck Landscapes. He was encouraged to attend college, so he enrolled at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he majored in entrepreneurship.
While at Iowa State, he continued working and soon realized that college wasn't for him. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 contributed to his decision to leave college and pursue his dream of working full-time in the landscaping industry.
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Wood Duck Landscapes is a full-service outdoor landscaping company. The firm's specialties are grading, seeding, irrigation, patio installation, landscape lighting, hardscaping and more, primarily for homeowners.
Most of the company's landscaping and hardscaping work is at Lake Panorama near Panora, Iowa. The lake community has approximately 1,500 homes, and Wood Duck Landscapes has completed 200 projects in the area since 2019.
Based on the early success of Wood Duck Landscapes, Eike added a second company in 2021 called BluGrade Earthworks. The sister company focuses on site work, including excavating, grading and trucking — a natural complement to his landscaping business.
Photo courtesy of DEVELON
Jack Eike, president of BluGrade Earthworks, also works with Wood Duck Landscapes – the family business.
"Our goal is to create a one-stop shop for homeowners, where our clients are dealing with one salesman or one project manager," Eike said. "They can get any kind of patio, retaining wall or lawn feature that they're after. And if they're looking to build a new home, we can help them from start to finish on the exterior of the property — from clearing and flattening the land to digging a foundation for a new home. After that, we come back in and finish the property or the lawn with Wood Duck Landscapes."
Eike's decision to pursue a career in landscaping in place of a college degree is an example of something becoming more common in the Gen Z age group (typically defined as those born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s). According to a story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, more young people in their late teens and 20s are choosing careers in skilled trades due to the rising pay and increased use of technology. Some individuals in this generation don't want to be saddled with college debt for years after completing their degrees.
A significant factor in Eike's decision to pursue landscaping as a career was his love of the outdoors and the satisfaction of seeing projects completed.
"I think the biggest motivator for me doing outdoor work is the overall satisfaction I get from transforming a customer's property from something that could be messy or dirty into something that looks clean, looks nice, and is really what they are after," he said. "Fulfilling their dreams."
Overcoming Challenges
Like many landscaping companies, Wood Duck Landscapes faces the challenge of finding not only enough skilled labor but also employees who are motivated and dedicated to their work.
"It's not necessarily about getting people; it's about finding the right people that have a good attitude," Eike said. "That's been our biggest challenge."
One of the ways Wood Duck Landscapes has recruited and retained employees is with its equipment. The company invests in compact machines, like mini excavators and compact track loaders, that are comfortable for the operators who spend countless hours in them.
"To have great air conditioning, a comfortable seat and plenty of legroom really makes those longer days of operating that much more comfortable and more feasible for employees," he said.
Embracing Technology
Social media is Eike's go-to source for finding the latest landscaping trends. That's where he came across a contractor named Matt Quinnell of Advanced Wall Structures in Minnesota and picked up some tips about attachments for compact equipment.
Photo courtesy of DEVELON
"They do a lot of boulder wall retaining work," Eike said. "And we were faced with the same situation. We had a crew working with heavy granite boulders, so I was looking at what he was doing. The best solution for us was to find a really strong rotating grapple that is reliable and dependable."
Eike purchased a rotating grapple attachment and a quick coupler, and he paired them with a DEVELON DX62R-7 mini-excavator from RTL Equipment.
"Previously, we used a bucket and thumb, like most other contractors do," Eike said. "The biggest challenge for us in doing that is that we don't have a lot of space to work or to move the machine to get just the right angle we need. Having the rotating function allows us to stay stationery and grab boulders in place, eliminating the time wasted moving the machine to set each boulder."
Wood Duck Landscapes has paired another DEVELON mini-excavator with a tiltrotator accessory, inspired by Advanced Wall Structures and the work the company does building retaining walls with boulders.
Productive Pair
It's not uncommon in the landscaping industry for contractors to use both a mini-excavator and a compact track loader. Wood Duck Landscapes does the same for many of its projects due to confined job sites and the many times operators are moving materials in tight spaces.
Eike and his operators use mini-excavators and compact track loaders in tandem to bring materials from their staging lot or roadside to the work area. Once at the area, the mini-excavators remove old landscaping products or excavate to install the new materials. As the excavator removes the material, the compact track loader loads it in the bucket and transports it out of the area. The compact track loader helps carry boulders to the area where the mini-excavator is positioned to lift, rotate and place the boulders on projects like shoreline repairs.
Photo courtesy of DEVELON
The tracked undercarriage of his compact track loaders is essential to the success of Wood Duck Landscapes.
"Having a tracked undercarriage for a compact loader is a night and day difference for our operation," he said. "Living in Iowa, it rains a lot, and we have very soft and slick soils, and using wheeled machines [skid-steer loaders] cuts our ability to work by a significant amount versus having track machines. It allows us to get back to work sooner than a wheeled machine does."
It's probably no surprise that Eike has found other ways to generate other income. His latest endeavor is a company called Deluxe Docks and Lifts, offering high-quality docks and lifts, as well as a barge for installation and removal services.
"Deluxe Docks and Lifts furthers our vision of being one source for a total outdoor contractor," Eike said.
Eike's entrepreneurial spirit will likely lead to new endeavors along the way. Until then, work is already secured for months in advance as homeowners eagerly await new hardscape and landscape features.
About DEVELON North America
DEVELON North America is headquartered in Suwanee, Ga., and markets the DEVELON (de•VEL•on) brand of products. These products include crawler, wheel and mini-excavators; material handlers; log loaders; dozers; wheel loaders; articulated dump trucks; compact track loaders and attachments.
With more than 200 dealer locations in North America, DEVELON is known for its unmatched dedication to service and customer uptime, and durable, reliable products. DEVELON is fast becoming a global force in construction equipment.
For more information, visit na.develon-ce.com/en.
Winter Work
Jack Eike and his Wood Duck Landscapes employees will continue working in winter as long as the ground doesn't freeze. In recent years, that's often not until January. Once cold weather halts the company's landscaping work, Eike and his employees switch to snow removal. The company owns a DEVELON wheel loader and rents additional wheel loaders from the local dealer. They use their compact track loaders in tandem with the wheel loaders for commercial snow removal. The machines are paired with snow pushers or buckets to efficiently clear snow from parking lots.
Visibility can be difficult when clearing snow. Between blowing snow and frequent night work, it's often hard for wheel loader operators to see clearly. Last winter, Eike rented a DEVELON wheel loader with the transparent bucket feature, which he said made a significant difference.
"I used the transparent bucket feature in snow removal, mainly to see when my front tires were coming up to either an obstacle, a curb or something that I couldn't either hit or travel over," Eike said. "It was definitely useful in those scenarios."
(This article was provided by DEVELON North America.)
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