WARREN, Ohio—Some might say fate is the unwavering, unyielding force that shapes the destiny of everything. As grandiose as that sounds, sometimes fate boils down to just two guys placing a couple ads in the local newspaper.

            “A friend of mine was in the roofing business,” said Bob McBride of Warren, Ohio. “He was doing good in roofing and he was a best friend of mine at the time, so I said ‘let’s go in the roofing business.’ He said okay.”

            32 years later, the sign outside Bob’s building doesn’t say anything about roofing, and his massive Model 3680 Beast recycler pumping out colored mulch suggests there’s a bit more to this story than meets the eye.

            “We went to put an ad in the local paper,” he continued. “My friend said he had a couple chain saws so we put in an ad for cutting down trees, too. We got one call for roofing, a little garage to do which just about killed my back, and we got five tree calls. So I guess then we decided we would be in the tree business.”

            And so marked the humble beginning of what would eventually become a very successful venture called Bob’s Tree Service, a business Bob McBride has built the old fashioned way—through hard, honest work and a bit of vision. Those efforts have allowed Bob to outfit his company with an impressive array of machinery despite being nearly a one-man operation, the Model 3680 Beast being among his fondest purchases. What really makes Bob’s story remarkable, however, is this: In an industry where knowledge is often passed from generation to generation, Bob is entirely self-taught. And according to him, the early days were interesting, to say the least.

            “We had basically a pickup truck and a chain saw, and we were in business.” said McBride. “I didn’t even know how to run a chain saw. We didn’t even know what a climbing line was. I would just throw the safety line around me, and we’d put a ladder up against a tree and climb up there.”

            Bob’s education in the tree care industry didn’t always go smoothly. His initial efforts were thwarted by a minor injury that actually persuaded him to temporarily pursue other career options. He eventually returned to solo tree work on the side to supplement his income, starting again with a pickup truck and a chain saw. This time the tree bug endured, and with the business expanding he bought his first chipper—an old Fitchburg.

            “I think it was like 25 or 30 years old,” said McBride, laughing. “I picked up the Fitchburg for about $4000 or $5000 dollars and kept that. And then we were in the tree business.”

            Thanks to that old chipper, the tree business also became the mulch business, which really took Bob’s Tree Service to the next level.

            “We always had trouble finding places to dump wood chips,” he said. “So we started stockpiling chips and trying to sell them just the way they were for mulch, because people were really buying bark, a lot of bark. One afternoon, a guy stopped by—he had a little haybuster . . . wanted to know if I wanted a demo. So he ground some [chips] and I compared it to the bark mulch, and they were really close. I was like hey, I could sell this, so he hooked me up with a guy locally who had a bigger grinder, and we started grinding.”

            Bob’s insight served his company well. Demand soon outpaced the production of the old Fitchburg, leading him to eventually purchase a Vermeer 1600 which he then replaced with a Bandit Industries Model 250. By now the proverbial light bulb that guides every great entrepreneur had lit, and while his competitors were laughing that Bob was selling “ground up tree limbs,” Bob was laughing all the way to the bank. A few years would pass before the competition eventually realized the benefits of grinding and selling mulch of their own, but by then, Bob’s Tree Service had carved a place atop the local mulch market.

            “We sold it for more than what bark mulch was going for [at the time],” he said. “People would call and ask why we were more expensive, and I’d say because ours is better! And we sold out the first year; we sold all our woodchips. So I thought, instead of going for high end, let’s go down to the middle class with more people . . . and we dropped the price. And the same thing, we were just selling it out our eyeballs.”

            Business was booming for Bob’s Tree Service, and he began to think about grinding the chips in-house instead of relying on the local help he’d enlisted. Then colored mulch hit the market, taking a healthy bite out of Bob’s bottom line until he found a local supplier with a portable coloring machine. Relying on two equipment suppliers to create colored mulch got him back in the game, but all the while the thought of having a much larger grinder of his own—something that could not only handle limbs but larger trees and other wood waste—persisted in the back of his mind. Impressed with the family-like relationship he’d found among Bandit customers, Bob made the decision to invest in one of the largest horizontal grinders on the market. 

            “I liked the idea that the Beast could really chew up the [big] stuff it could do, and quite honestly, we never looked any other way. We never looked at the competition, never even priced them. I trusted that if I had problems I would be taken care of and helped all the way through.”

            Though it was a used model, his 3680 Beast worked tirelessly alongside a pair of Bandit 250 chippers, allowing Bob to realize the higher levels of production he envisioned when he first started grinding mulch. That increase in production empowered him to actually begin accepting raw material from other companies, and the Beast’s versatility also permitted him to take in a variety of wood waste such as pallets. Seeing that his customer base was also extremely interested in colored mulch, Bob ordered Bandit’s Color Critter system, allowing him to completely internalize his entire mulching process—from raw material to a finished, colored product.

            “You want to have the upper edge,” said McBride. “Had I not purchased the Beast, then I’d be on the same playing field as everyone else. And it has been good; I haven’t had any problems that couldn’t be solved but the fact is that, the support was there. I really do feel like the people here [with Bandit] are family. You’re not just another sale.”

            Today, Bob’s Tree Service is a case study of how a small company can successfully wield high-end machinery usually reserved for much larger firms. Where he once had a problem disposing of wood chips and wood waste, Bob’s concern now is getting chips and waste to create mulch.  Aside from the material captured from his own operation, he accepts material from other tree services as well as pallets, slabs and just about any clean wood waste. Despite shortages in the area being felt by his competitors, Bob generally has a surplus of material on hand.

            “We let other people dump their wood waste here,” he said. “As long as it’s clean . . . we let them dump. Other people within 20 miles of me; there’s actually such a struggle to get material, the ones that used to laugh at all the mulch we’d sell are now even struggling to get the raw material.”

            Bob’s efforts in the mulch business have helped him weather the economic downturn that has resonated throughout the tree care industry. In addition to mulch, he employs a single four-man crew that primarily handles private customers for the tree service side of the company. Bob says the tree business is stable, but he’s interested in focusing more on the mulch, which already contributes to over 50 percent of his business, including wholesale and retail customers.

            “We’re selling dyed mulch for $26 a yard, our competition sells it for $28 a yard,” he said. “Bark mulch is $21 a yard, and we’re also selling what we call Bob’s Original . . . it’s $18 a yard. A lot of people call it economy but I don’t like that. It doesn’t look that bad, so we call it Bob’s Original, with secret herbs and spices. We wholesale quite a bit; most of it is sold out of town but we did have one or two of the competition buy off us.”

            Bob is optimistic about the future, so much so that he ultimately traded in his first 3680 Beast on a brand new one. He’s also toying with the idea of expanding his grinding operation to more than just wood.

            “I ran into some people up north . . . that grind shingles and that’s all they do,” he said. “You can charge to take the material. We have piles of good asphalt here right now that people have dumped for free, which is good asphalt that I can grind and sell to people for fill or for topping off. That’s another thing we’re looking at that we’ve been interested in, because with the Beast, you have different options than just grinding wood.”

            With 32 years of tree work under his belt, Bob isn’t planning to slow down anytime soon. He’s eyeing the land around his 6.5 acre facility with thoughts of expanding his workspace. After all, more space means more room for big grinders like the Beast, which also means more capability to produce the mulch that has played such an important role in his business. Looking back, Bob speaks with a witty fondness that only comes from someone who did things his way, and succeeded.

            “We never joined a group or anything; if I’d known what they were I probably would’ve. But quite honestly, just getting [in there] and still never knowing how to tie in until you see someone else tie, then it’s like, I learned that knot.  But sometimes I would just stop on the side of the road, usually in the wintertime when we weren’t busy, and watch another crew take a tree down for an hour or so.”

            From a pickup truck and a chain saw to a fleet of chippers and one of the best horizontal grinders on the market; Bob McBride of Bob’s Tree Service in Warren, Ohio might have a small operation, but his big aspirations prove he has the right stuff when it comes to tree care, mulch, and wood waste recycling.

            “I’m an honest worker,” he says with pride. “And I believe in the American way.”