Conn.’s DeFeo Materials Finds Transportation Solutions

products to wholesale landscape supply yards up and down the east coast — it supplies over 15 different products to approximately 200 different customers across the east coast.

“It’s common knowledge that the housing market has been very strong in the southeastern United States for a prolonged period of time,” said DeFeo. “Over the last decade, both builders and developers have become aware of the environmental benefits of using decorative stone in the landscape process versus other options such as mulches and pine straw. You are conserving water as well as not having to buy, reapply and pay to have the mulch or pine straw redone every year.

“And a big benefit is the stones keep their color yearround,” he added. “Once you put the stones down, they pay for themselves in two or three years and in the long term it is substantial savings, especially for commercial properties that spend a fortune on spreading mulch every year.”

This market opened up for DeFeo when a gravel pit in New Jersey fell behind on supplying product and could not supply a stone yard in western N.C. When DeFeo Materials delivered the product, they asked the customer “how much more of this would you like” and her answer was “Honey, you could never bring me enough.”

At that point, DeFeo knew it had tapped into a great market, and it has been exploding ever since. But to properly serve the market, some changes needed to be made in the mode of transportation.

“As we started to develop the market with more and more customers, we realized that this just wasn’t going to happen with truck delivery,” DeFeo said. “People don’t want to drive trucks over the road anymore, and there are not enough bulk commodity trailers. Frameless dump trailers are how the majority of bulk commodities are transported. There are just not enough trucks available to move our type of material in the volume that we need transported, and still be able to do it economically.

“There are not enough loads of other bulk commodities heading north to bring back the trailers, so you have no backload, which skyrockets your transportation costs. The other issue, and it is a constant problem with hauling over the road, is battling the strict rules and regulations with DOT, equipment breakdowns and the general cost of trucks and trailers, which are increasing at an unbelievable rate.”

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