In a seasonal business, how you perform in the busy times can make or break you for the rest of the year. That’s why Kankakee Nursery Company counts on its fleet of Kubota wheel loaders to be the real workhorses during its busy time the six weeks in the spring when the company digs up 40,000 to 50,000 balled and burlapped trees to ship them to buyers.

Kankakee Nursery has purchased six Kubota wheel loaders five R420s and an R410 in the last six years to help with its spring digging chores. “We use the wheel loaders when we’re digging the trees, picking them up and transporting them to our loading dock facility”, said Steve Worth, sales manager for the Aroma Park, Ill.-based grower. “We also use them
on the loading docks to move the trees around.”

The articulated loaders are particularly adept at getting into, and moving between, the tight rows of trees, Worth noted. The company previously used tractors with a fork attachment
for the job, but workers preferred the increased maneuverability of the wheel loaders.

In fact, the wheel loaders are considered so key to the spring job that “the guys in charge
of picking up the trees would like these loaders to be locked in the barn and saved for the next year”, Worth said. That’s not going to happen, however, because the R420s are too popular among the remaining employees. “They put them to a variety of uses”, Worth added.

The machines even occasionally play the role of giant measuring cup when Kankakee Nursery needs to mix up another batch of its custom potting mix. “We use the bucket attachment to add a bucket of this and a bucket of that”, Worth said.

Potting soil is a big deal when you’re growing as much as Kankakee Nursery. The company owns about 2,900 acres, and has about half of it planted with nursery stock at any one time.
Corn is grown on the rest.

Kankakee grows a full line of nursery stock and landscaping materials, including trees, shrubs, evergreens and perennials. Its biggest percentage of sales comes from those balled and bagged trees it digs each spring. The company is one of the largest suppliers of balled shade trees in the country, and the largest supplier in the Midwest.

Customers include wholesale nursery distributors, landscape contractors, garden centers and municipalities. About half the company’s sales are in the Chicago metro
area, with the rest of the sales taking place
throughout the Midwest and in Colorado.

Clyde Worth and Lloyd Pottenger started the company in 1925 as a small retail nursery and landscaping service. The partners did a little growing on the side, and eventually, the company started concentrating on growing, dropping the retail and landscaping elements
of the business.

In the 1960s, Clyde Worth’s sons, Bob and Phillip, bought out their dad’s partner and, according to Steve Worth, Bob’s son, “They really built this from a small company”. Currently, three generations of Clyde’s descendents—including one son, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, plus a few in-laws—work for the company in some capacity.

Kankakee has used Kubota equipment since it first arrived on the scene, Worth explained. “We have a lot of Kubota tractors in our fleet. They just seem to have fewer breakdowns
and fewer problems than the other brands”.

The nursery has a staff of three full-time mechanics, headed by Dewey Dykstra, to maintain the fleet. “Parts availability and speed of delivery from Martin Implement is very good”, noted Worth.

The company has also benefited from utilizing rental-purchase options from Martin Implement. For several of the R420 wheel loader purchases, Kankakee rented a new machine from Martin Implement in time for the busy season, used the rental to help with digging and transporting trees, then traded in an older machine to purchase the new one. “That way we got some use out of the old one, then replaced it”, Worth said. “It’s a good program for us: if we decided we didn’t need a new one, we weren’t obligated. We’re a very seasonal business, and Martin Implement helped us accomplish our spring job without locking us into purchasing.” Kankakee Nursery found both the equipment and solutions it needed at Martin Implement. In April 2003, after 10 years as a successful Kubota construction franchise, Martin Implement expanded to a full-line Kubota dealership. These new Kubota products, complemented by Martin Implement’s existing construction and turf equipment lines, offer customers a vast range of purchasing options.

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