Hybrid owners pumped up over fuel savings

[Steve]

More LCOs using hybrids. A while back we had talked about what is the best type of vehicle to use when bidding on jobs. Do you want a luxury car to promote the feel that you are a high end firm or do you want to use a truck? Should you wear a shirt and tie or show up in work pants and t-shirt?

Well Mark Barnes, owner of Barnes Landscaping seems to have a pretty big operation. He has made the choice to present the image of efficiency and save money on gas.

What do you think of this? Would you like to use hybrid vehicles too?


Hybrid owners pumped up over fuel savings (http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=475514) - But Mark Barnes, owner of Barnes Landscaping in Madison, says a different kind of green fueled his decision to buy a small fleet of red Prius hybrids for his business.

"With gas at $2.50 a gallon, I figured we'd save $18,000 a year," said Barnes, who bought five Priuses this year and is buying another five soon.

Barnes, whose business employs 100 people, says the cars are used by staff members as they go out to get bids for upcoming landscape jobs. He bought them all this year to take advantage of the federal tax credit, he said.

Of course, the savings go only so far, given that it's a landscaping business with a fleet consisting mainly of trucks hauling trees and plants.

"I have about 90 vehicles that don't get this kind of mileage," Barnes said, "but every little bit helps."

[kc2006]

He wouldn't make it in this area. If the local paper did a story on him all the GM people and union people in the area would be turned away from him. People around here are pretty hardcore when it comes to buying American. I don't see anyone really driving Japanese trucks for landscaping or most other service type businesses because of the loyalty the community has.

I intend on getting a cab over truck down the road, they're technically Izusu's but are badged as GMC's and GM owns part of Izusu so I should be ok

[Steve]

That is an interesting regional situation. I don't think lco's in other areas would run into that problem.

Have you found other small businesses in the past to be boycotted by union members over such issues?

[kc2006]

I know there was a company here that had all toyota's, they did something with property lines, but anyway, they out of the blue switched totally over to chevy's and now I'm seeing more of them. My dad is one of those GM guys that will do that, every time he used to see their trucks he's start complaining about why can't they support american companies. As for LCO's, I've never seen any of the middle/large sized businesses own a Japanese truck, so that tells me something.

The oil navigation (fancy name for a company that plots out where to drill for oil) company that my brother works for used to have all toyota's and once the big deal with gm went down they sold the fleet off and bought all chevy's and ford's, and the executives all got GMC's. They never said why they did it, but they did. I'm starting to wonder if these huge companies actually pull together to help eachother out in hard times. I mean if GM/Ford were to go under, that would have a huge effect on even the largest companies I think.