Fall cultural practices such as aeration and overseeding are not new to the service menu at RD’s Total Lawn in the Philadelphia suburb of Langhorne, Pa.
The company and its owner, Ryan Dittes, have been offering both services since the company started nine years ago. In 2024, for example, RD’s did about 200 aerations and overseedings for its growing roster of customers, all with walk-behind units.
But Dittes knew he was only scratching the surface when it came to that kind of work and that an upgrade in equipment could also upgrade top-line revenue for his company. That’s why he jumped when Stinger Equipment came calling with an offer to gift RD’s Total Lawn a new GT30 riding aerator for use this past fall, part of an effort by Stinger and Landscape Management to raise awareness of the real-world benefits these machines can bring to a lawn care company.
“We set some pretty lofty goals (once they received the GT30),” Dittes says. “They were definitely stretch goals considering what we’d done in the past, but we were hoping to break six figures in top-line revenue with aerations and overseeding. And then we also wanted to try and get at least 80 percent of our treatment clients on board for those services.”
Consider those missions accomplished. The introduction of the GT30 to RD’s fleet helped the company exceed both goals while at the same time proving the use case for riding aerators and overseeders that Stinger and its vice president, Dustin McGehee, had long argued for.
“We ended the year doing a total of 334 fall aerations and overseedings. And our total revenue, $107,000, blew past our goal. Far exceeded it,” Dittes says. “And then we had over 86 percent of our treatment clients sign on for those programs, so definitely exceeded all of our expectations and goals there with that.”
“That’s an impressive feat, adding that kind of revenue from a secondary service for your business,” says McGehee, “But that was why we did this, to pull the curtain back and show people the money they’re leaving on the table, show them how aerators like the GT30 can take a really labor-intensive task and make it easier for the contractor and more cost-effective for the customer.”
About the only challenge that Dittes and RD’s faced last fall was having too much new work and not enough time to do it in, a scenario that Dittes says was “a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.”
“In this part of the world, our seeding window is really short. Ideally, we have a six-week time frame that is our peak time for seeding. You want it to be cool enough that you can get some seed down, but you don’t want to get it in the ground when it’s cold enough that it’s not going to germinate. There’s a sweet spot there you have to hit,” Dittes explained.
The solution was doubling down on Stinger’s GT30. RD’s ended up renting another unit for the season to pair with the one they received from Stinger, allowing them to run two aerations/seeding crews every day to keep up with demand.
“Logistically, that was the only way we could pull it off,” Dittes explains. “Typically, we’d run two-man crews for this kind of work … but what was really cool about these machines was that we didn’t see a need for that. The GT30 with the seed box on it allowed us to pull plugs and seed at the same time. There really wasn’t a need for a second person on those crews. It was more efficient to run a second single-person crew with another Stinger.”
Based on the successes of 2025, Dittes and his team at RD’s Total Lawn are already strategizing for next fall, including the possibility of adding a third crew.
“With seasonal work, it’s always good to reflect on what worked, what didn’t and really try to perfect it. We’re definitely doing that with aerations and overseeding,” Dittes says. “Getting a third crew out on the road would really ramp things up for us.”
