Founder of Earthworks Solutions. From Chalmette to heavy equipment, grading, land clearing, and dirt work across Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
I grew up in a trailer park in Chalmette, Louisiana, with my mom and three sisters. No father in the picture. New clothes showed up twice a year, on Christmas and my birthday. Most of my friends had houses, two parents, and weekend trips. They didn't know where I lived because I wouldn't tell them. I spent my time at their houses instead of mine.
That's where this whole thing started.
Started: 2008
Built from: Chalmette roots, hard labor, and direct client work.
Still driving the company: clear scope, hard work, and visible results.
When I was about 10, my grandfather dropped off a Murray push mower from Walmart. Fifty-dollar machine, no height adjustment, took your full body weight to push. I hated cutting the grass at our place because every other kid I knew got an allowance for doing the same thing. I got nothing.
One day a neighbor watched me push that thing across our yard and said, "Josh, mine's next. I'll pay you."
I froze. He asked me how much I charged. I had no idea. He said, "How about $10?"
I said, "On my way now."
That was the moment. Not the lawn. The itch to make money.
At 12, my oldest sister's father-in-law asked if I wanted to work on a house he was building. He'd pick me up after school, drop me at the job site, point at piles of cement scraps and shingles and lumber with nails sticking out, and leave. No phone, no way to reach him.
I figured out the fastest way to do every job he gave me, because I wasn't about to kill myself doing it the hard way. Most days I finished in two hours and sat there bored for another hour or two waiting for him to come back.
He'd pull up, see me sitting, and lose his mind. "Impossible. There's no way you finished."
Then he'd walk the site, come back, pull out his wallet, and hand me $40.
To a kid in Chalmette, $40 in three hours was unreal. I hid the money at home so nobody would ask about it.
The toughest day came at the end of that build. He told me a hard job was coming. Turned out it was 22 pallets of St. Augustine sod. A full 18-wheeler load. About 2,000 pounds per pallet. Six grown men started that morning. By hour two, half of them quit. Too hot. Too heavy. Ants and spiders crawling out of every pallet.
Three of us finished the job. He brought me home and handed me two $100 bills.
That day I learned the lesson I still run my business on: hard work pays.
At 14, the same guy asked if I wanted to learn a trade. I asked what a trade was. He told me he ran an AC and heating company and would teach me everything if I showed up.
I worked for him every afternoon after school (when I didn't have basketball) and every Saturday until I was 18. Then Hurricane Katrina hit.
Katrina wiped out St. Bernard Parish and most of the surrounding area. His customers couldn't come home. The business was gone overnight.
I spent the next year gutting houses and clearing storm debris. Eventually he called and asked if I wanted to come back. We worked together for another year before he retired and sold the company.
I'd saved up enough to take the holidays off and think about what came next. By Mardi Gras I had my answer. I was going to work for myself, the same way he had. I'd watched him do it for years. Talking to customers. Selling jobs. Writing estimates. Doing the work. Collecting payments. Running service calls.
College doesn't teach any of that.
I started with 500 business cards and a bike.
I rode through neighborhoods with nice homes and nice lawns, tucked a card into the weatherstripping on the front door so the homeowner would have to see it when they unlocked it. Within 30 days I had 60 new clients.
The calls, texts, and referrals haven't stopped since. Proof that if you do good work and treat people right, the rest takes care of itself.
We started in lawn care. The services have expanded a lot since then.
Around 2012 I noticed something across nearly every property I maintained. Bumpy yards. Low spots. Some so deep that once the rainy season started, I couldn't even mow them.
I started asking clients if I could grade their properties. A lot of them said, "I thought you'd never ask."
For the next five years I graded yards by hand. Every load of dirt, sand, or topsoil got moved with a double-wheeled wheelbarrow and a large ice scoop. I leveled every property with a 30-inch landscape rake.
Backbreaking. I questioned myself constantly. But every time I finished one and a client pulled into the driveway, the look on their face made it worth it. The referrals kept coming. The jobs got bigger.
Eventually I bought my first piece of heavy equipment. A Vermeer CTX 160 stand-on track loader. I call it my chariot of fire (it's a stand-on, hence the chariot reference). Only regret is not buying it sooner.
In early 2020 the mayor of New Orleans told the city no one was allowed to go to work. I thought it was the craziest thing I'd ever heard. I went to work anyway.
The roads were empty. The jobs got easier in some ways. Then something shifted. As clients sat at home day after day, they started noticing every project they'd been putting off. Garden work. Grading. Sod. The lists kept growing.
One client asked if I'd come out to his 350-acre property in Mississippi for some land clearing, underbrushing, and grading. Two-hour drive. I went.
Riding around that property in a side-by-side, something hit me. The quiet. The smell of the trees. The space. I was at peace.
His first ask was clearing 30 feet of brush along the entire fence line so his expensive tractor wouldn't get its windows broken by branches. I knew right away this was the next chapter for Earthworks Solutions.
In spring 2022 I bought a Caterpillar 299D3 XE. The plan from that day forward has been simple: own the largest track loader and the largest stand-on track loader I can run, with every attachment I need to handle whatever the job requires. Two Swiss Army knives that can take on almost anything.
Every dollar of profit since has gone back into the business. Attachment after attachment. The goal hasn't changed since I was 18 and watching my old boss work a service call.
Core focus: grading, dirt work, land clearing, and site-ready support services.
Operating standard: written scopes, realistic timelines, and cleanup that leaves the next trade ready to work.
Commercial support: references and insurance details available on request.
Offer real services. Get them done on time. Hold the standard high every single time.
That's the mission of Earthworks Solutions.
Verified feedback from clients across Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Josh prepped our double lot and installed sod. Our lawn is now the best in the neighborhood, and we get people slowing down just to look at it. He maintains it without needing any input from us, which we appreciate. The cost was competitive and reasonable.
We hired Josh and Earthworks Solutions for a couple of projects at our home and came away impressed. Josh took the time to explain the difference between what we wanted and what we actually needed, then delivered beyond our expectations. He and his team were respectful of our time and our home throughout. Josh's knowledge of landscaping and horticulture is deep, and he's genuinely great to work with.
Josh has handled several projects for us. He built a rock road in our backyard for our boat, and we didn't have to think twice about it. He handled everything from start to finish and the work was excellent. We also had a swimming pool removed, which left our backyard a mess. Josh brought in dirt, regraded the area, and it looks amazing now. We liked his work so much we had him put in a brand new lawn for my mother, including scraping out the old lawn, laying new sod, and installing an irrigation system. Her lawn looks incredible. Josh is efficient, professional, and fairly priced.
Free quotes. Clear scope. Same crew discipline Josh built the company on.
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