Dakota 440 Solved Manpower Problem

Jan. 2000

When Faery's Landscaping of Ransomville, NY, started a project to rebuild about 100 bunkers on a golf course near Buffalo, NY, a couple years ago, it didn't take long for company president Jack Faery to see that keeping the manpower needed to spread the sand was going to be a big problem.

"It was taking four to five men to do a couple bunkers a day...to put the sand in those bunkers. It was all hand labor and there was just no way that we were going to be able to keep the guys working that hard," Faery relates. "That's when I started looking at the Dakota."

The Dakota 440 that Faery purchased in April 1998 was ordered without the top-dresser spinners. "There aren't many courses in this area that do any fairway top-dressing," he explains. Faery wanted the machine mainly to spread sand in traps and also to place rock when tile work was underway.

With the new equipment on the job, the work situation completely reversed itself. "Since we've gotten the 440, we have been using three guys — one on the tractor and two raking and tamping — to do four to five bunkers a day. It works great. All the controls are right by the tractor seat. It just saves us a ton of time. We can reach almost all the sandtraps with the conveyor system."

Before getting the 440, sand had been hauled in with a truck. Planking was used near the bunker to reduce damage to the turf there. And the sand had to be spread by hand.

"We do a lot of work for the higher-end courses and when they schedule you to work they want it done right now. The old way, when you drove over the grass, you made a mess of things. With the 440 and its big 20-inch wide turf tires, we can get sand to the traps without hardly leaving a mark," Faery says. The machine is pulled by a 50-horsepower Kubota tractor that is also equipped with the wide turf tires. "It doesn't cut in anywhere. I was amazed. Even when you go around the bunker three or four times, it doesn't wear the turf down at all.

"There were a couple situations where we built greens in the fall. We sodded around the bunkers but they didn't want the sand put in until spring because they didn't want it to become contaminated and didn't want to have to take care of it until they were ready to play. One that job, we would have had a heck of a time getting sand in to those bunkers without the 440. You can shoot the sand quite a ways with the conveyor system. That has sure saved us on a couple jobs."

The 30-year-old family business includes a nursery but the 440 hasn't been used to support that end of the business "We don't grow a lot. We have about 24 acres of field for growing," Faery says. "Ours is mostly a retail nursery. We got started doing golf course renovation work about 15 years ago.

"We've used the 440 for quite a few different things," Faery says. "We've used to put stone over tile. We put in one eight-inch tile system that was probably 500 to 600 feet long. It hadn't been planned on and was in a low area but we could still use it to get stone to that tile. There was a lot of stone involved... maybe a couple hundred tons, but it really worked out well.

"One of the things that has really impressed me," Faery says, "is the company. When we were rebuilding those 100 bunkers, the Dakota was going everyday and we did have a couple breakdowns. But when we called and explained what had happened, the guys in the shop at Dakota knew just what it was and sent the parts out overnight air. There was no reneging, or any talk like we did something wrong. The part was there the next morning and we were back in business. It was just amazing.

"We're usually a little bit reluctant to buy something from that far away because of possible lack of service. But we've never had any problems with Dakota. We've had some breakdowns with the machine, but we sure do use it a lot. Dakota has been a good company for us to do business with. That machine has helped us get a lot of jobs."