Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/102855
contractor of the year finalist | by Tom Jackson A high-flying motorcycle champ finds a new career in heavy equipment Todd Bennick Nebo, North Carolina Bennick Enterprises Year started: 1998 Number of employees: 20 Annual volume: $3 to $5 million Markets served: Excavation, grading, site clearing, grinding, shoreline stabilization B y the time he was 18 Todd Bennick had earned a measure of fame, winning several top 10 finishes in motorcycle super cross competitions on the East Coast. His daring and prowess on the dirt tracks brought the kind of attention that might bowl over a young man. But Bennick looked around one day and decided that the wild and wooly life on the road was not the path God wanted him to follow. So Bennick turned off the fast lane and in 1998 decided to deal with dirt in a different way. He bought a dozer. The change in speed may have been dramatic, but Bennick brought the same boldness, work ethic and focus to this new endeavor – pushing dirt – as he once did racing on it. From the purchase of that first dozer 14 years ago, Bennick has grown his company to some 20 employees offering a wide array of services including grading, excavation, site clearing, shoreline stabilization and grinding. Many of his sites involve steep, heavily wooded mountainsides and require extremely skilled, safety-conscious operators. A living to be made The dozer started out as almost a hobby. Bennick already had a factory job when he bought it, but he got a few dozing jobs on the side to help pay for his big machine. He dozed driveways and did light grading. Soon he added a dump truck and trailer to his fleet, and before long, an excavator with a thumb to load and clear brush in the deep woods around Nebo, North Carolina, east of Asheville. "At that point I began to realize that there was a living to be made in this business and a lot of opportunity," Bennick says. EquipmentWorld.com | January 2013 51