New Member - New Business in the PNW - Cascade Mulching Pros LLC

Name's Tolli, owner of Cascade Mulching Pros LLC out of northwest and north-central Washington. I run jobs in Whatcom, Skagit, and Okanogan Counties, based out of both Everson (west side) and Winthrop (east side, Methow Valley).

Background is a little different than most of you probably. Spent my 20s doing environmental consulting fieldwork, then pivoted into IT for 30 years, the last 16 as a Technical Program Manager at Microsoft. Got laid off in June 2025 and after no luck finding another job paying $200k/year I decided to stop trading hours for someone else's stock options and build something of my own.

Started Cascade Mulching Pros last September. Here's where I'm at honestly:

Equipment I own:

HY14C mini excavator (1.4-ton, hydraulic thumb) - 14hp gas - needed for a house project but use for root removal on blackberry clearing projects billing at $225/hr for equipment & operator ($7200)
HY480C mini skid steer - 24hp gas, triple pump, 10GPM+ AUX flow - runs brush cutter well ($6700)
14-foot 16,000lb gooseneck dump trailer to haul everything and use to dump debris when I upsell that ($11700)
2005 F350 diesel dually with goosneck ($9000)
72-inch Chinese drum mulching head - bought for $3000 off Marketplace last fall so I could do 2 demo jobs to create marketing material (broke 6 teeth holders the first day hitting rocks, cheep junk Chinese steel, so had to buy a welder and weld them all back the first night - field-repaired, gets the job done as long as I keep it out of the dirt until I can afford a used Fecon)

What I rent:

Mini CTL 42" Brush Cutter ($85/d), Grapple ($50/d), land leveler ($40/d) as needed

Full-size high-flow CTL for larger mulching jobs. Deliberate choice right now while I build the customer base before making a major equipment purchase. Unfortunately I have to hang a temp plexiglass panel in front of my rental equipment glass doors as none of the local rentals have the demo doors.

Created LLC in September, did business plan and created website and all the social media sites for the business and then took a break over the snowy winter months in the PNW. Started back up early April after I finally got my insurance and general contractor license all in order. Printed business flyers and put them on all the bulletin boards in the 3 local counties I am targeting (Whatcom, Skagit & Okanogan for those in the Washington) Started getting some calls almost immediately. In the first 2 weeks I got two paying job completed for blackberry & debris removal projects.

Ate my lunch after underbidding the fist one as it had hidden giant stumps in a yard waste pile covered with blackberries - thought it would take 1.5 days and took 4 - quote was for $1350 but she gave me a $350 tip and a 5 star reviews on GBP and Facebook. I guess I worked for free for a great review. Completely rewrote my quote template after - moved to cost plus for all disposal and dump work and an hourly rate for rootball removal.

Second job was a one day blackberry brush-hog clearing job and I bid $1000 (1 of 3 phases on property - she only had $$ for the phase 1 work) and she paid $200 tip. She was happy until she asked for a date afterwards and I politely declined - didn't get a review unfortunately. You win some you lose some!

15 total leads so far, 3 are still active, one quote signed for a $2400 one day job and scheduled for next week to clear understory and expand firebreak around house up in the mountain woods - 8 hours of machine time. This is exactly the type of job I want and happed from organic search

I started META ads this week and have 8 new leads in the pipeline (for the lower paying blackberry clearing). Just starting to get traction from META, Google and flyer distribution. Still trying to figure out how to break into the more lucrative larger wood forestry mulching - people near me don't seem to even be able to pay $1800 for a day - next weeks $2400 job was from organic web search of "forestry mulching Okanogan county" in February - not ads were even running at that time, didn't even have GBP created yet. I nutured the lead, finally did the site walk last week when the owner was at his vacation cabin and the snow was gone and ground dry enough for me to proceed before it gets so dry that the fire danger is high.

I got my VistaPrint order last week (1000 business cards, 5 vehicle and trailer magnets, 2 large yard signs, 1 hat) - will continue to hand those out to potential customer and B2B contacts. I have 3 good flyers (1 for B2B listing services, 1 for blackberry removal focus on two west slope wet counties, 1 for fire prevention in the much dryer eastern slope Okanogan county) - I print these and hang them up and also email or text them to people and business.

Website: https://cascademulchingpros.com

Socials: @CascadeMulchingPros on FaceBook, Instagram (Youtube, TikTok - not yet active) and @CascadeMulching on X

GBP: https://share.google/pWV7sb2hYx7LHbLU1

Planned Next Steps:

Start Google Maps scraping to get more B2B contacts (arborists, real estate, landscapers, contractors)
Start paid Google Ads - use my $500 new user credit before I use it. My organic placement is pretty good already, but why not use it. I'm number one for "forestry mulching bellingham" in AI and search results (non paid results) "AI Overview - Forestry mulching services in Bellingham, WA, offer an eco-friendly way to clear land, removing brush, blackberry bushes, and small trees (up to 6 inches) by turning them into nutrient-rich soil amendment. Local contractors like Cascade Mulching Pros, Bell Forestry Mulching, and Wescon Enterprises specialize in site prep, fire risk reduction, and pasture reclamation."
Take a summer subcontract for fiber trench work in Winthrop — The local electric co-op landed a federal grant to connect roughly 5,000 homes with fiber. They need excavator operators and it pays per foot plus per termination box on both ends. Conservative estimate is $1,000+ per day, five days a week, through freeze-up in the fall. Three reasons this makes sense beyond the paycheck: I'd be justifying the purchase of a Takeuchi TB250-2 (one of the highest aux flow GPM options in the 4-5 ton class), the summer earnings fund a 100+ HP CTL purchase for forestry mulching, and I'd be dropping a business card at every single property I trench through in exactly the rural mountain corridor where my best forestry mulching prospects live. It's a paid marketing campaign that also happens to cover equipment acquisition.
Expand into WA DNR FireWise contracts — Washington DNR has active hazardous fuels reduction and defensible space programs, especially in the east slope counties where I'm already operating. Goal is to get on their approved vendor list and pick up government-funded clearing contracts. The Methow Valley is prime territory for this given fire history out here.
Build toward USDA Forest Service VIPR qualification by 2027 — VIPR (Versatile Infrastructure for Performance) is the federal procurement system the Forest Service uses to hire equipment and operators for fire support work. You register your equipment, get inspected, and compete for dispatch contracts. Timeline is realistic once I have a full-size CTL owned, not rented, and enough operating hours documented to meet their requirements. This is the long game but the contracts pay well and the work is steady.

Looking forward to learning from people who are further down the road than me. Happy to share what I figure out along the way.

Tolli Forker

(360)592-3367

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New Member - New Business in the PNW - Cascade Mulching Pros LLC