This week, Host Taylor White welcomes Trey Bohannan, widely known as Treybodirt on TikTok, to the podcast. A seasoned entrepreneur and equipment enthusiast, Trey’s insights here today offer a masterclass in leadership and work-life balance. Together, he and Taylor explore his remarkable journey in the landscaping and construction industry, starting from his humble beginnings as a young lawn mower to his meteoric rise as a successful business owner. Along the way, Trey emphasizes the importance of equipment care, team camaraderie, and the timeless allure of older machinery.
Their discussion highlights the qualities of effective leaders, the significance of investing in employees, and the need for a healthy equilibrium between professional and personal life. Trey's wealth of experience managing a business is distilled into valuable lessons and practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Moreover, his passion for antique tractors shines through as he shares captivating stories of his collection and his involvement in a charitable event for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The episode culminates with Trey and Taylor's thought-provoking exploration of success, emphasizing the profound impact of personal values, nurturing familial bonds, and cultivating meaningful relationships. Join these two learned professionals here today for a wealth of valuable information and advice as well as a hefty load of laughs that will leave you equal parts educated and entertained.
Topics:
- Trey's humble beginnings and gradual expansion in the landscaping industry
- The allure of using and maintaining older equipment in a technology-driven world
- Encouragement for aspiring entrepreneurs to learn hands-on equipment repairs
- The significance of cash flow and effective expense management
- Trey's exceptional organizational skills in optimizing team workflow and productivity
- The practicality of utilizing two-way radio systems for communication on job sites
- Cultivating leaders within teams and learning from others in the industry
- Making necessary adjustments based upon lessons learned from past mistakes
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Episode transcript:
Trey Bohannan: You go to any of my jobs, there's a little broom or a paintbrush because I'm kind of cheap like that. I'll buy those big paintbrushes for a dollar and stick them in there. But they sweep their cabs out two or three times a day. They clean their windows. We check all the fluids. We tighten tracks, we dig out tracks. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of times we don't. But if it's a rainy day, if there's an opportunity, we're in the damn shops working. And it's a good day for everybody to bond. You get 20,30 people in a shop working. They're all bonding and learning from each other.
Taylor White: Welcome back, everybody, to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG Podcast brought to you by our good friends over at Komatsu. Always appreciate them. With me today, I have somebody who, when I was scrolling on TikTok, I was like, hey, this guy looks like I got to talk to. We have the one and only, and this name is incredible, such a cowboy name, Trey Bohannan. He likes being called Bo. But Treybodirt on TikTok. And I mean, anywhere else where he's going to start posting. But Trey, thanks for being on today, man.
Trey Bohannan: Thank you for inviting. It's pretty cool to get to do something like this.
Taylor White: Yeah, man, 100%. And you know what's awesome? So for the viewers at home and I was kind of chatting with you last night when I found you, I was scrolling through TikTok. I got two kids, so whenever I get a little time to myself at nighttime, I find myself just before bed, looking, catching up on the world. And I saw Treybodirt and you had the CONEXPO hat on. And I'm always looking to interview interesting people. And the way that you're talking and just the way you carried yourself, I was like, I got to get this guy on. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Like who is Treybodirt? What do you do? And yeah, start with that.
Trey Bohannan: So I started this business as a kid, and I started mowing yards. That led into doing some residential landscaping. And then as time progressed, things progressed. And next thing I know, I got more [EXPLETIVE] sitting around the shop than I can shake a stick at.
Taylor White: Yeah, it definitely looks that way online. And last night you were saying, too, that you're a big fan of older equipment, right?
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah. I went to a job this morning. We've been on a few weeks, and we moved a lot of material, and they have mostly all new equipment out there. But I started the job off clearing with the old dozers. There's always a funny reaction because the superintendent on the job will look at you and go, "What's all this [EXPLETIVE]? Unless we're going to knock all these trees down with and pop stumps, and then we're going to sling some dirt in here." So I always get a reaction out of the older equipment.
Taylor White: Yeah, no, 100%, and you would. You totally would. And I see that online as well, too. People commenting about the older equipment. Like you said, though, I got some newer stuff and some older stuff, and the older stuff works just as well, if not better.
Trey Bohannan: Well, it's a tool. Each a tool for a separate job. And I'm decent at working on the older stuff, too. This new stuff today is expensive. I was telling a young man the other day, he was talking about an excavator that costs around $300,000. And I said, “Man, I don't see how you can afford that.” He said, “I can't, it's too damn much.” I said, “Well, you need to go buy a $30,000 or $60,000 excavator. Do your best. And if you blow a line, fix it. If your cylinders leak, fix it. If the motor goes out, you go pull it out, put a new one in, or rebuild it.” A lot of people forgot you can replace [EXPLETIVE] without replacing something.
Taylor White: No, 100%. You're right. And it's interesting because you hear a lot of the other way of it, which is like, hey, I'd rather make payments on something, and then there's warranty or stuff, but you're kind of the opposite. Well, I'd rather not make a payment on it. I'd rather just kind of fix it.
Trey Bohannan: That's right, yeah, there are times you do need payments on stuff, but I prefer to handle our own deal and make our own destiny on that. I'm not going to overload myself, you know what I'm saying?
Taylor White: So you started the business when you were younger. How old were you? What was your upbringing like? What did your dad or your mom do? Did you get into this industry? I'm curious.
Trey Bohannan: Well, my mother was always a stay-at-home mom and my father was in the National Guard and he worked for Sears and Roebuck company for a long time. He was over the appliances and he had a little farm. So as a kid, I played on the farm, and I think we had 150 acres. It wasn't much, but we grew wheat and soybeans and then got into rice, and stuff like that. But it was never a big farm, but we enjoyed it. And I think that molded me more than anything because I'd see my dad with a chainsaw and I'm like, [EXPLETIVE], I got to get a chainsaw. They weren't going to let you have a chainsaw at four or five years old. I tell people all the time, they say, “Oh, man, it was so hard growing up.” We had tractors with no cabs and you'd work all day, and at lunchtime, dad would bring you a can of Anies with no wrapper on it and an old Milwaukee beer that had no paint on the side so you'd have something to put in your damn throat.
Taylor White: That's awesome.
Trey Bohannan: It was in the middle of nowhere, so if you didn't pick it up, the store was generally closed at 4:00 in the morning when we went by, and if you didn't pick it up the night before, it just was what it was.
Taylor White: So you grew up in Arkansas then?
Trey Bohannan: Oh yeah.
Taylor White: And where are you from? You're from Pine Bluff, right?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. We had a farm in Loan Oak and we lived in Jacksonville. And then my grandfather passed away down here in '93, and I had a grandmother down here that she had to have help, and so that's kind of when I made the transition. She had 25, 30 cows, and 150 acres there on that little farm. And I just started coming down here and really helping her, and I didn't know anybody in the town. So as I started meeting more people and I remember looking at the mowing crews down here when I was young, I was like, “Damn, man, I want to have four riding lawnmower tractors.” And then when the zero turns came out, I think the first one, I got a book in my truck. I paid $7,078 for that zero turn. And everybody told me I was crazy. They said, “You've lost your damn mind.”
And then I started thinking I'd lost my mind, and within 30 days I went and bought another one, and now we have a fleet of them, but we still run mowing crews to this day. Big mowing crews. And it's just cash flow. Just when it rains and it's cold, you're still getting a check, and nobody understands that. But cash flow is the only way to run a damn business. I don't give a [EXPLETIVE] yet pressure wash or sell cheeseburgers at a lemonade stand. You got to have cash flow, guaranteed money.
Taylor White: I couldn't speak more than to that. You're 100% right, the cash flow. Anytime you talk to somebody that’s actually doing it, they’ll always mention the word cash flow because, without cash flow, you're done. You're nothing. At what age did you start buying these lawnmowers at?
Trey Bohannan: The first one I bought was a Craftsman when I was probably about nine years old. It had a stance of 12 horse Briggs and Stratton engine in it, and it had a little torque converter with a 36-inch deck. And I got the warranty on them, it was from Sears. The guy, his name was Hank, he’d would always come out and fix my lawnmower on a monthly basis or whatever. And I remember when I was probably a couple of years into taking being serious about it, Hank said, “They’re not going to fix your lawnmower no more.” I said I bought a five-year warranty and they bucked on it, but they kept fixing my lawnmower. Sears and Roebuck never sold me another one with a warranty on it.
Taylor White: So how did you progress into like you said now, you’re doing a little more dirt work but you have this landscaping company. What does your business look like today? How many people are you running, and what aspects of the construction or landscaping industry are you handling?
Trey Bohannan: Mainly only, large commercial. If there’s an old customer needs something done, we'll do whatever we got to do to help them get it done. But we're built to do bigger stuff. Basically that being said, the overhead is so high that we can't go rake a yard for $200. We have to learn to say no, and that's the hardest thing in the world. I don’t know how many people watch the show, but again, I got to tell you, every one of them It's hard to say no to somebody. But when you can say no without giving a reason for saying no then you've accomplished everything. You don’t have to give an answer, you know what I’m saying? Don’t follow it up with, the reason I can’t do this is because this. Just say no. That’s so hard to do.
Taylor White: Yeah, that's a real piece of important advice. You're 100% right on that.
Trey Bohannan: And the employees, we range anywhere from 20s to 30s. When you start adding sub-drivers and all, it adds up. Payroll is really tough.
Taylor White: That’s where cash flow helps.
Trey Bohannan: Payroll and diesel fuel. So if you minimize your payments here, you already know payroll is way up here and fuel, everybody goes– Well, you don’t complain about burning fuel, a lot of diesel and gas for all of our pickup trucks. I don’t because when my fuel bills are high, my income’s high. You know what I’m saying? The higher that fuel is, the happier I am.
Taylor White: Yeah, you’re right.
Trey Bohannan: When both trucks are filled up, man, I’m happy.
Taylor White: Yeah, it means things are moving. If you weren't getting fuel, it means nothing was moving out of the yard.
Trey Bohannan: That’s right. We keep GPS monitors on the tanks. We actually have three different places where we store fuel. And the reason I do that, I store a lot of fuel at the main shop. And at the old shop, I keep fuel storage down there in case we run out of electricity or there’s a storm or something. So we’ll go down there and suck those tanks out as time goes on. We won’t let it sit there and gel, but I always keep them full. And then I got option 3 on fuel and that’s my form down there. I keep tanks down there and gas laying and stuff for the form, but it gives me three options.
Taylor White: One aspect of what you're doing is super interesting to me. There were a couple of things actually. The first thing that was really interesting was you talking about you didn't go to college or university or anything like that, but here you are running a successful business.
Trey Bohannan: And I have to give credit to the people that work there. I've always had really good people. I don't know how to answer emails, and I never planned on answering a damn email. That made me get rid of my flip phone a few years ago. And I hate it because when you’re on your machine, it’s too heavy in your pocket. It’s like you got a beer can in your pocket all day weighing you down.
Taylor White: I texted you last night I said, “Hey, man. Good talking to you. Save my number.” I didn’t get a response back. I was like, oh, he’s either falling off the lawn chair or whatever.
Trey Bohannan: After I got off the phone with you, I went down in my fish camp. Fished until after dark.
Taylor White: A way to go to live life.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah, fish weren’t biting. There was an older gentleman down there and he needed help getting his boat up so that was a good deal that I was there to help him get his boat back up.
Taylor White: So what is it about social media? Like how I found you. Take me through that. How did it go from you having a flip phone a couple of years ago, go from that on TikTok, which is not new to say, but it is– Instagram has been around for longer. How did you get posting on there? What made you want to do that? What happened there? Because you found a lot of success.
Trey Bohannan: So the guy I work for I worked for as a kid, he was my mentor and he had a little farm, and I helped him. It was actually a big farm. So I'd be over there working on my dad's farm, and I'd see George overworking, and he had tractors with cabs and they were blowing black smoke. I was like, that's where I want to be, on that side of the fence. So I'd see him at the grocery stores and whatnot, and I went to work for him. And he taught me everything about money. He taught me how to work on stuff, I mean, everything. I was like his son even till the day he died a year and a half ago. But you don't find that any more. I mean, nobody that could teach you from fuel to finance to land purchases, any of that. And he taught me every bit of that. And we were in the office after George died, and I kind of went through a little bit of depression there for a little while about it.
And I think we put a video of a tractor and it progressed. I really started it to teach people about antique tractors. That's my passion. And that evolved into the dirt. I never really planned on putting anything about my business on there ever. And then people would see something in the background, say, hey, talk about this, or talk about that. And I don't brag about anything I got. I'm not a wealthy man. I'm not the smartest man. Damn, sure ain't the best fisherman because, hell, I've had three [EXPLETIVE] fishing trips in a row. But I enjoy interacting. And my office, they'll show me the comments and stuff, and I'll say, hey, say this or say that. I'm probably not the most interactive person on there, but I try to put a video out each morning if we have time. I hope it helps everybody. I'm not here to brag about anything I have. And don't say I'm better than anybody or anything like that. I just say, hey, if you're in this situation, do this. If you're in this situation, do that. And that's the route I go with it.
Taylor White: Yeah, it's very apparent that you're doing it because you just want to give people knowledge, and I think that it's super important, and it's really nice. Like you said, it is hard to find people that want to mentor like your friend, sorry to hear that as well, that you kind of looked up to and mentored a bit with. And it is interesting because my first video that I saw of you, you were talking about a dozer. You were walking around it. No, it was a newer one. It was a newer John Deere.
Trey Bohannan: That John Deere, the 450P.
Taylor White: Exactly. I have a 2001 John Deere 450H. So I think that's why I kind of was looking at it. I'm like, well, this is interesting. And you're going around, you're showing everything about it. And the way that it attracted me was you weren't like, this is this, and this is that. You were just walking around it. You're opening up the cubby, and you're like, I don't know what they got in here. Oh, it looks like this. Okay, cool. And then you kept walking around it. It was just so kind of informative and low-key and relaxed, and I was like, man, I could listen to this guy talk all day.
Trey Bohannan: That's a new model. John Deere brought it. We kind of get the first things that come out, they'll send down to the shop, and if we want to buy it, we'll buy it. We didn't end up buying that dozer. It sold literally that day. I never got to drive it or anything, but John Deere and Caterpillar have been really good to us. And Komatsu Powers Equipment, our local Komatsu dealer, I purchased a Komatsu from them two or three years ago. A PC200. Hands down, the best tractor ever built.
Taylor White: Yeah, we had a 170 in it. They're a great machine. Lots of power, good on fuel.
Trey Bohannan: They swing easy. Everything works good on them. Matter of fact, I pulled all the cylinders off that a month or two ago and sent them up. Had a hydraulic company rebuild them.
Taylor White: What's your favorite aspect of what you get to do each day, kind of day in, day out? What's your role? I guess may be within the business. What are you doing every day?
Trey Bohannan: So I don't get to run equipment like I used to. I'm better at organizing than anything. I tell people this all the time. I'm not great in the office, but I do have great office people. I'm not really that good at running a bulldozer. I got guys, young guys that can finish grade running three, four miles. And hell, I get out there, it looks like a damn motorcycle track. I'm not that good on tractor. I get pissed off on tractor. If tracks ain't level and it does that little teeter, I'm going to sit there and grind that track down. I'm going to lift that side and grind it down till I'm level. So I'll get in there and kind of get upset a little bit. So I'm not good at running a lawnmower, to be honest with you. Those new mowers, I don't even know if I could crank one, to be honest with you.
But I'm damn good at making sure everybody goes to the right spot every morning. And I always tell them, the first hour of the day is the most important. Let's get in here and I try to clock everything every morning. We got a certain time framework. Everything needs to be out onto a job, and that's where I get involved. And then once I get everybody going in the right direction and we've had our meeting, me and Big Trey, we have a meeting in the shop or in the office. And I go to the jobs, different jobs. And we have a two-way radio system that is one of the best. And that's how all the communication goes on all day long, through that two-way radio system.
Taylor White: Really? Tell me more about that. I'm interested.
Trey Bohannan: So everything we own has a radio in it. If it's got a cab or if it's a pickup truck.
Taylor White: Like a two-way radio?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. And so Big Trey has the base station.
Taylor White: How far does it go?
Trey Bohannan: We're running a little more than half the state right now. I can be at my fish camp two hours away, and I can be in the woods where phones don't work. And it's kind of dangerous where I fish at because I, like, ride in 10 miles in my truck, and then I unload my Ranger, and then I have to go winch for a damn hour to get to the fishing hole. And if you do get in there and something bad happens to you, I can't get it. I can't make a phone call. I can't walk back to my truck and make a phone call. But I can get on that radio. I can damn sure get somebody to answer.
Taylor White: That's wild. I remember when I was 18, I worked for a local company and they had two-way radios as well, too. And that's kind of something you don't hear anymore. But honestly, I'm just thinking it's an older style, but it actually kind of makes sense. I mean, we're all using cell phones and if you don't– We work at a lot of job sites. Same with you. We're out in the country where they don't have cell phone reception. That is really interesting.
Trey Bohannan: I got them at every one of my hunting camps. There's a damn base station and I can call the office and say, “Hey, I ain't coming to work today. We're going fishing.”
Taylor White: And there's nothing wrong with that. So if you got some guys or girls out on a job site somewhere and they need something, is that your form of communication? Like, hey.
Trey Bohannan: They use cell phones a lot, but there's a lot of times where eight to ten people or 20 people need to hear what's going on. If they say, hey, I'm up here at the rock quarry and it's taking 2 hours to get loaded out, them trucks, they're turning around, they're going to the next destination they need to be. Or we'll switch them over to cut or something. So it's very efficient. It's the most efficient tool you can have in a small business.
Taylor White: Wow, that is very interesting. I really like that. I'm contemplating, what do you use? Like Motorola?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. They're Motorolas. Yeah. And we have our own tower. We installed our own tower and everything. So we don't pay a monthly fee or anything.
Taylor White: Man, I need to come down to Arkansas and see this. That's hilarious. That's awesome. I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
Trey Bohannan: And like you said, a lot of places don't have good service, and a lot of people, they'll see our trucks with big whip antennas on them, they go, “The hell you all got CVs for.” But that's another tool that's very effective.
Taylor White: Yeah, 100%. It was interesting when you're talking about kind of like your role in the mornings and stuff like that. To be honest with you, you just seem like a great kind of leader. Do you see yourself– Although you're not running the machinery or you're not in the office, I mean, that's kind of like my role more so, too. I'm not an office guy. I'm out on site in the office, they joke and they call me the site guy because if there's a missing piece of the puzzle, that's kind of where I fit in. Like, “Okay, our tractor-trailer driver is gone today. Taylor, hop in. We need a load of blast rock over to here. Hop in here. Okay, get in the dozer now and do that.” And I could do it, but I'm not the best at it. But I also try to make sure you're leading the crew and morale and culture. Is that all stuff that you're kind of thinking about as well, too?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. So the crews, each one of them is a leader. There's that one leader in the truck and he's built three or four more. And so you are constantly cultivating this new leader. You don't know who it's going to be. It's like having a bird dog. A good bird dog is born no different than a good leader. But they have to have training, too. They have to watch others to be on point. It's a great analogy, though.
Taylor White: It's a great analogy, though. It's true. And like you said, you had a good point where you're like it's not like leaders aren't born, they're raised. You got to give somebody the tools to succeed before they actually succeed. And I think that that's kind of what you were saying. It's just super important to kind of shape them into that. What kind of characteristics do you think makes a good leader? What are some things that you're looking at or you're thinking of yourself? Like, okay, I got to lead this crew. I got to make sure everyone's safe.
Trey Bohannan: Regiment, discipline, just everyday routine that builds crews. So we can run hard for two or three weeks on jobs, going good weather, and you give me three rain days. It'll take us three days after that to get everybody to get all the trucks back in rhythm. You have to be every day. If you're that guy that goes, well, I'm going to run this other company, but I'm going to be at this one two days a week. If you already got that mindset, you might as well just go fishing or do something different. And everybody that works with me, if I'm not hunting or fishing, I'm at that damn office from sometimes 4:00 till just whenever I feel like leaving. But I won't leave until I feel comfortable about everything. You got to have good people.
And I'll tell you all this for everybody's listening and you all want new dozers and tractors and dump trucks. If you don't invest in your employees, you can kiss that [EXPLETIVE] goodbye because it'll be trashed. And if you go to any of my jobs, there's a little broom or a paintbrush because I'm kind of cheap like that. I'll buy those big paintbrushes for a dollar and stick in there. But they sweep their cabs out two or three times a day. They clean their windows. We check all the fluids, we tighten tracks, we dig out tracks. And don't get me wrong, there are a lot of times we don't. But if it's a rain day, if there's an opportunity, we're in the damn shops working. And it's a good day for everybody to bond. You get 20-30 people in a shop working. They're all bonding and learning from each other and learning about each other because they might not have ever got to work with that other person.
Taylor White: That's a really good point. You're right. I think as well too because we're a small to medium-sized business as well. You could go into any of our X-rays right now and I believe we don't have an X-ray operator over the age of 23. They're all young guys. And if you go in there right now, they're all wearing sock feet. Their boots are sitting on a mat. They have their work boots, but they're on a mat beside the pedals, and they're in sock feet, and those cabs are squeaky clean.
Trey Bohannan: That's impressive.
Taylor White: This is how we run it. And I'm not saying every single machine, but all of our excavator operators, and then they kind of get in between them on whose is cleaner, whose not. Our dump truck drivers. We hired our first female truck driver a month ago now. We took a company photo the other day. I got in the truck, real quick, moved it, I got out. She's like, “You were in my friggin truck.” And I'm like, “What do you mean?” And she's like, “There are boot marks on it.” And she keeps that truck spotless. So you're 100% right, and I think it's easier when you have a smaller to medium-sized business. But as you grow larger and get larger pieces, you'll need to fill the seats with people who necessarily won't care just as much, but it's nice.
Trey Bohannan: And you're seeing more females getting into this industry. Whether it be in the office or being in estimating or being in the actual equipment, you're seeing a lot more of that. It's very impressive because a lot of people back in the old days would say, "Oh, a female can't run this bulldozer." I see them running them better than the grown men.
Taylor White: Well, you want to know something impressive? The girl in the dump truck, she was the first one who said, "Okay, loader operator in our yard.” He wasn't there to load topsoil. She hopped right out, got in that loader, and loaded herself. She figured it out. There were a couple of days where her truck was down, and much like you, rather than have you guys sit at home and not pay you, come on in. I'll figure out something for you. She goes, "Well, I'd really love to learn how to run a bulldozer." So I said, perfect. We got to move dirt in our yard. Hop in it. She loved it. And then this morning, she texted me. She's like, "Hey, if there are any other responsibilities, extra responsibilities around the company that I could pick up on, I'd love that." And I'm like, and I need more of that. That's a great employee.
Trey Bohannan: And going back to the employees, as you're progressing through the years, there's going to be family deaths, a father or a mother or brother or sister or an employee. In my opinion, you always take food to their house. We just had a deal the other day, and if they can't pay for the funeral or whatever, you do everything you can to help them with that or raise the money for them. These people, they dedicate their life to you, you know what I'm saying, to helping you. And they could go somewhere else and work and whatnot, but they give you 110%. And if you always give them 110%--
Like, one of my pet peeves is people coming into the office and they'll say, "Hey, my daughter has Daddy Donut Day or something like that. Do you mind if I take off tomorrow? Come in at 9:00 or 10:00?" And I'm like, "Yeah, do it. That's cool, dude.” Yeah, what's that going to cost me? A couple of loads of dirt. Who gives a [EXPLETIVE]. And there are days when people say, "Hey, my wife's working late, I got to go pick the kids up." You have to be able to adjust to that because if you can't, they're going somewhere else.
Taylor White: No, you're 100% right. It's all stuff that I see now as well. You're right. Yeah, you're dead on. You have to treat them like– They got lives as well, too. So you have to have that kind of work-life balance because, in the long run, it'll end up helping your company and help you way more. And it'll help them because they'll want to work with you. They'll want to work there because they know that you're accommodating, so they like that.
Trey Bohannan: And they build your company for you. I mean, they help you.
Taylor White: Exactly. When you said earlier, I was asking about what makes a good leader, and one thing that you put in there is discipline. And one thing that I'm really interested in because you deal with it too. Maybe someone kind of did something pretty stupid. Maybe that person is not the type of person that you can go up to. Like how I was raised, I was raised you get a swift kick to the [EXPLETIVE] if you did something stupid. But again, different world, different times. How do you handle discipline in your company? Is there HR or do you handle that? And if you do, how?
Trey Bohannan: If it's something petty, let's say, you're an hour late. That's got to happen all the time. I mean, that's just part of it. Just make sure you remind them they were an hour late. So how do you hold a crew up for an hour? And as far as disciplining them, this crew has to sit there and clean the shop and sweep for an hour, you know what I'm saying? Or have their stuff more prepared so it's not always hurting you that bad. But you have to voice your concerns at any time, like, "Oh, windows get broken or just it happens to me every day." So I've been able to channel a lot of that away from being pissed off. It happens. We're making good money. We can pay for that $100 part or $1000 part or whatever. And if you can't get that mindset, you can't do this anymore.
A lot of these young guys, my biggest thing on TikTok, Taylor is young guys saying, "Trey, I'm wanting to go work for myself." And I don't know if you've ever seen videos on that. So that's the main thing I get. And how can I be successful? I can't tell them how to be successful. I don't know their work history or any of that or their finances, but I try to give them advice, the best advice that I could give somebody in that position. And I like those comments when people ask me stuff like that.
Taylor White: Yeah, well, it's good because I feel like you have a lot of knowledge to kind of give with that being raised the way you were raised and starting things, how you kind of started them. What would be then if I was somebody that was like, "Trey, I want to start a business," what advice would you give somebody?
Trey Bohannan: You know, these are young guys, so they're seeing other people successful on social media now that we didn't see when we were kids. You know what I'm saying? So as a young guy starting in the business, I would say find a mentor. Go work for somebody for two or three years. Make sure it's something you want to do, you want to invest your life in, and if you feel like that's a good investment for your life, go 110%. If you're going to go, you go 110%.
Taylor White: Yeah. It's about working hard and kind of putting in that work.
Trey Bohannan: And work smart. You got to work smart. I've made a lot of bad decisions. And I should have sent this truck here, this or that, and I look back at the end of the day and go, “Hey, you really messed that one up.”
Taylor White: Do you have one kind of event that was a really good lesson learned that you'd like to share? Kind of one of the bad things, right?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. Hauled gravel on a big job all in summer. Hell, it was 14,000 tons. It was 67 miles one way, and I had trucks scattered all across South Arkansas trying to get this job done. And when I bid it, one of my mentors, he told me, he said– He was an old dirt contractor, he passed away, but he was giving me his estimate on the compaction rate on that SB2. And I said, “I got to get this job. I'm going to lose this job if I don’t.” So I went to go ahead and shave, like, $4 a ton. Well, that $4 a ton made the difference in making money and not making money. And then we had a bunch of rain, and it had gullies washed in it, and I'd have to replace the gravel waiting on asphalt guys. But after it was said and done I told him, “Man, I lost $30,000, $40,000 on working all summer. And he looked at me, he goes, “I bet you won't do that again.”
And that's the best advice I could give anybody is learn from your mistakes because you're going to make them every day. You look at the man hours. If you add up all your man hours throughout 300 work days out of the year or whatever, 250. You got a lot of work hours in there, and there's going to be a lot of mistakes, and you can't short-stop them. They're going to happen. So that's probably the best advice I can give, is if that mistake cost you $40,000, you learn. It cost you $40,000 to learn that mistake. I know a lot of people drive down the road listening to this or whatnot. They're thinking, well, I'm not going to make a $40,000 mistake. It's inevitable. If you're going to work for yourself, you're going to make a lot of mistakes, and you got a man up to them, you can't go have a pity party and go, “Daddy, I made a mistake.” That ain't going to work.
Taylor White: What do you think defines success? What does success mean, in your words?
Trey Bohannan: I've never called myself successful, never will. But if I had to say success it would probably be a good man that raised his family and did everything right, that's success. All this other equipment, land, and cool stuff– I think in the end when we get old, we'll realize, “Hey, I should have spent more time doing this or that.” That's a successful man.
Taylor White: I would agree with that.Nothing kind of about money, but I feel like it's very important to take care of your family and take care of the people that work for you as well, too. That, to me, being successful, is every week when they get paid, hey, they're getting paid on time, and I might not get paid that week, but everybody else is, so that's the way she goes.
Trey Bohannan: I had a lot of people come up to me that I hadn't seen in 10 or 15 years and say, “Man, I appreciate you did this for my Dad,” or this for my grandparents or whatever. And it could be something as simple as changing a tire. That was one of my worst things, is if I saw somebody out with a flat tire, I had to stop and fix that flat tire for them or change it. And now I have a rule, I'll still do that. But if you're pulling a bass boat and I'm working, I ain't stopping and helping you.
Taylor White: What's the thing you were telling me about the antique tractors and raising some money or doing some stuff? What was that all about?
Trey Bohannan: I collect antique tractors, and we do one show a year at our farm, and people come from all over, and they bring tractors, too. So it's like a carnival if you had to picture it in your mind. I mean, it's a lot of vendors. And it's for Make A Wish Foundation, and we did really good raising money for them last year, and this next year is going to be more successful than that. But I just love antique tractors, and they're a lot of work. A lot of work keeping them up and finding the– I used to pick any antique tractor and go throw a lot of money into it. Now I go after serial numbers and lower serial numbers, low production.
Taylor White: More rare ones?
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah.
Taylor White: So, you know, there's a guy up here in Tackleberry, and you go in there and everything's red. What's your brand?
Trey Bohannan: Anything I want.
Taylor White: Anything. Deere, McCormick.
Trey Bohannan: Molines, Case. If it had to do with something with rice back in the old days, that's what I want. One day, ultimately, I would like to have a museum.
Taylor White: Rice.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. So everything. A lot of them run off butane, they got the huge tire, rice, and cane tires on them, wide front end. That's what I like.
Taylor White: Butane.
Trey Bohannan: LP. We did a video on that. I've called them butane burners since I was a kid.
Taylor White: Liquid propane?
Trey Bohannan: Liquid propane. But in the South, that one video got almost a million views because I said the word butane, and everybody in the world said, “Oh, that old Redneck. He called it butane and its propane.” And then they would type out 82 words about how I didn't know what I was talking about. I loved it. I thought it was great.
Taylor White: So do you have a barn full of some antique tractors or do you buy and sell?
Trey Bohannan: Not for sale, really. It's more buying. I'll swap a tractor if I want somebody’s–
Taylor White: So you have a collection?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah.
Taylor White: That's awesome. Well, actually, behind me here, that's my favorite brand. I love Cockshutt. They're Canadian-made tractors. Love them.
Trey Bohannan: Don't have a lot around here. Versatiles were big in rice in the old days around here. The old 800s, 850s, 900s, and triple nickels, those were big stuff down in the south, the Versatiles. And they're not as popular today as they were, but man, when I was a kid, if you didn't have a Versatile, you didn't have a tractor. We had some staggers.
Taylor White: What colors are Versatiles? Red.
Trey Bohannan: Red, okay. Yeah. It comes out of Canada.
Taylor White: Really?
Trey Bohannan: I'm probably wrong on this, but Manitoba or something like that. I can be totally wrong on that, but I didn't have time.
Taylor White: You were at CONEXPO ‘23. What did you think?
Trey Bohannan: That was the best show I've ever been to in my life.
Taylor White: It was a good time?
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah.
Taylor White: You're still wearing the hat. So Jeez, you must have liked it.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah. Pro Four was making the little hats and it was great. It was great to just see all that. I don't ever go do anything and this year Big Trey was like, we need to go out there and all these people from TikTok kept messaging, saying, “Are you going to CONEX?” And so we made a decision. We said, all right, we're going to jump in the car and drive out there.
Taylor White: You drove?
Trey Bohannan: We drove. I'd never seen the country before, so I wanted to see it. Hell, we might as well do something cool.
Taylor White: Do you travel a lot? You ever get out?
Trey Bohannan: No, just flying around. That's about it. Not in a car. I wanted to see the Grand Canyon.
Taylor White: Nice. How long did it take you?
Trey Bohannan: 20-something hours, wasn't it? Pretty damn good trip. But we got to see some beautiful stuff. And Vegas, I love Vegas. That was the second time I'd ever been to Vegas. And I'm not a gambler, and I enjoyed Vegas. I didn't like walking that much. They ought to give somebody like me a mandatory little electric scooter to ride around.
Taylor White: I hear you there, man, for sure. I'm not a gambler either, but I'm a drinker. And I like construction. So the two went really well together.
Trey Bohannan: All those little tables with the beers on, we were smashing them. Yeah, it was great.
Taylor White: The people are the best part. I love seeing everything, but just seeing the people, it was just so cool.
Trey Bohannan: Well, and that was my first experience ever being somewhere and people recognizing me. I told Big Trey and them, they'd stop, watch the game. Day 4, and I said, Pay, when we take off walking, it probably takes us two hours to get down this hallway. And once one stops you, everyone's going to stop and get a picture. Even if they don't even know you. They're like, “Hey, let me get a picture. I got to get one.” Let me get a picture with this old Redneck Bull.
Taylor White: Well, I hope that you're going to be there in 2026, man.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah.
Taylor White: That'd be awesome to see you there. I know it sounds like it's super far away, but it's definitely not. It creeps up quick. Time moves super fast. And I hope that you keep going on TikTok. Like I said, I want to see more stuff on Instagram from you as well, too. So you got to tell somebody in the office, start posting your stuff on Instagram. Are you on Instagram as well?
Trey Bohannan: A little bit, yeah. We don't do a lot of social media.
Taylor White: Well, you're nailing it. And I think that you're really onto something with yourself. You've opened up a whole other thing.
Trey Bohannan: I don't even know how Instagram works. You just put pictures on? I don't know.
Taylor White: That's so wild. Oh, man. Dude, Trey, thanks for coming on today, man.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, it's been great.
Taylor White: I really appreciate it. Like I said, I got your number now. I'm going to text you, and whether you respond or not, that's up to you. But I'd love to come down and see what you got going down there. But thanks for taking the time.
Trey Bohannan: And I want to get one last piece of advice to all the guys out there. Girls, whoever, if we're going to go through this life, let's just pop a wheelie and ride it on through because everybody will notice you.
Taylor White: I like that. All right, everybody, thanks for listening to the podcast brought to you by our good friends over at Komatsu. Trey, thank you. Everybody, we'll catch you on the next one.
Trey Bohannan: Thank you, brother.
