The essence of Virnig: Nurturing bonds
At Virnig, we don't just manufacture attachments. We cultivate relationships. It's these connections that define who we are and how we operate; from our team synergies, to our expansive dealer network, to the customers that daily rely on Virnig attachments to get the job done. Relationships are at the core of everything we do.
Embracing "The Virnig Difference"
What sets us apart? We often talk about "The Virnig Difference," a combination of factors that elevate our brand above the competition. It encompasses our cutting-edge designs, premium materials, and efficient processes. And most importantly, it's about our people - the heartbeat of Virnig.
When we say "our people," we're not just referring to our employees and their families. We're talking about a broader community that includes our extensive network of dealers across North America, and every single individual who chooses Virnig attachments. You're not just customers; you're our extended family!
In the fast-paced world of manufacturing, our people are the backbone of our success. Their dedication, expertise, and passion drive every aspect of our business forward. But what does it mean to be part of the Virnig family? Let's hear from Jay and Craig of Brush Sabre Forestry Mulching & Landworx, two voices who embody the spirit of Virnig.
Brush Sabre has experience with a variety of skid steer attachments. We recently visited them in North Carolina, and got to film the V70 Drum Mulcher, the V70 Tree Disc Mulcher, a Power Rake, and a 4-in-1 Bucket with them!
If you'd rather read than watch, keep scrolling for the full transcribed video testimonial.
VIDEO TESTIMONIAL ON VIRNIG'S FORESTRY ATTACHMENTS - BY JAY & CRAIG OF BRUSH SABRE
Please introduce yourself & tell us A LITTLE about your business
Jay: I'm Jay Foushee, and this is Craig Hester, and our company is Brush Sabre Forestry Mulching & Landworx. We're located in Roxboro, North Carolina.
TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU GOT STARTED
Jay: A late phone call one night, and Craig says, "We need to be forestry mulching."
Craig: Our dads were best friends, they went to college together. His dad was best man, one of the groomsmen in my dad's wedding.
We both were farmers, we still are, and farming's kinda drying up in this part of the world and we need something else to be doing.
There's a big demand for it (forestry mulching) right now with all these watershed rules in place, and you have to get permits to put houses up, clear land, and they won't let you do so much.
We're not considered "disturbing the soil," so we can just go right in and clear it out for them. So it works out pretty good.
HOW DID YOU FIRST HEAR ABOUT VIRNIG?
Jay: When we bought the skid steer, we wanted a bucket to go with it, and our dealer had a Virnig and so we got the bucket. Then when we looked at a disc mulcher, he was carrying Virnig disc mulchers so we got that. Now we've got the drum and the power rake. We like the Virnig brand, and so we just stuck with it.
Craig: I got some friends that use Virnig buckets on their skid steers, they really like them and talked about how heavy duty they were. And when you open the bucket, you've got gripping teeth on the gate and the bucket itself so they can grab stuff a lot better.
A lot of them are just smooth edge, so when you grab something heavy it slips off. They just liked (Virnig), they were good reviews we had heard so that's what we decided on.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE FEATURE ABOUT YOUR VIRNIG ATTACHMENT?
Jay: There's nothing that we don't like about them, really. I know for the drum mulcher so far we like the finish it leaves.
Craig: One good thing I like is how it brings the material in, sometimes brings it in together and usually you may have to make a pass and then get over and do a back drag again. I did it yesterday, I had some long cedar limbs and I caught the end of them and I backed up and I'm looking... I gotta make another pass and I didn't have to and I backed on up to see if I had drug it backwards behind me, and it actually had sucked it in and got it all at one time, so that saves you another pass. You cut down 50 passes a day, that's saving you time!
Jay: The TDM V70, or the Total Disaster Master as we like to call it, we like how it really can run through the trees and chew it up real good.
Craig: I like the disc, you can really cut your time down on jobs.
DESCRIBE YOUR USAGE: DISC VS DRUM
Craig: I guess say precise, more tedious with the drum, the disc does a coarser mulch, but it gives you, there's different ways you can mulch with it. You can shatter a tree by pulling it in the chute. You can just sometimes make better time, especially on rougher land. It's more durable through rocks and just heavy terrain. It's more of a ... more of just total disaster, I mean really it just annihilates. A lot of times we may use the disc and come back with the drum if they want a little bit finer mulch then we can mulch it up a little finer.
Jay: A lot of our field clearing, where somebody wants to reclaim a field, most of it is pine saplings and sweetgum saplings. We can take either head and run through it fairly quick.
DESCRIBE THE TYPE OF VEGETATION YOU CLEAR
Jay: Sweetgums, pines, poplars...
Craig: Never realized how many maples and oaks and the very hardest of wood there is, there's a lot of it, and wisteria vines, grape vines, briars, BIG briars.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT VIRNIG'S CUSTOMER SERVICE?
Craig: Virnig's very good and the reps are good, and when you got a problem and you call them, they'll call you- if they don't talk to you then they're gonna call you right back. And I don't mean within a week, they'll get back right with you that day more than likely. And we really like that. Because there's so much that can happen. This whole thing can change on you when you're mulching and you can have everything ready to go and your machine's perfect and then something'll screw up, unforeseen.
When you're on a job and you got eight more jobs to do somewhere else and you're kinda on the clock, you need to be able to ask somebody, "What do I need to do right here to fix this?" Well what, and get an answer and get at it, try to fix it, and get going again. You don't want to be down any longer than you have to be.
TELL US ABOUT VIRNIG VS COMPETITION
Craig: We have had other brands, and we have friends that are in this that have other brands, and I don't think there's any comparison myself.
Virnig's probably one of the... Drum, from what I can see, seems like it's more powerful. It's turning faster. I'm noticing the flow is probably a little lower rated on the high end than the machine we have run, but it seems to work better because it stays jacked up wide open. It takes more for it to spool down, where you have to stop and let it spin back up and catch up and get going. Seems like it's faster to me and I really like that because that's saving you time.
DESCRIBE YOUR TYPICAL ROUTINE MAINTENANCE
Jay: About once a week we'll come in after a job, sometimes it's daily depending on how much dust. We have to blow out the filters, clean the filters, clean out from under the skid steer, make sure the heads are clean, the teeth are in good shape before we start. So, a lot of times, sometimes that's a whole day's worth of work right here at the shop.
The biggest thing we've had to do is just, you know, your teeth wear out and you gotta change teeth or you gotta turn them over.
Craig: It seems like we stayed doing something to them all the time, not with Virnig. Virnig's been really good so far.
Jay: I mean, we changed every tooth on that disc mulcher the other day in thirty minutes.
You grease it once a day, basically, according to the books, eight hours. And we've had some that wanted you to stop and grease it two or three times a day. If we're not stopping doing something like that, we're running.
TELL US A STORY
Jay: First day we ran it, we went down here to my dad's house just because it was close by. And he came down, and Craig started running it, hit one tree and cleaned up a little bit. Ran about three minutes. He stopped and I'm like, "Uh oh."
He opened the window, and he said, "You can call the dealer and tell him to come get the other head. I want this one."
To me that speaks volumes, that just a few minutes of running it we realized that, yeah, this is what we want.
Hats off to the folks that built it, designed it, and did all the hard work for it.
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST CHALLENGE?
Craig: This is a pretty dangerous profession. I figured it would be, but it really can be. You have to really be concentrating on what you're doing the whole time you're in that machine running it. You have to be aware of everything around you as best you can, because in a skid steer it's kind of limited sight. Back up cameras we have, that doesn't tell you whoa stop, you're two feet from something. You know, you gotta really be paying attention.
The heads we're running, I mean they throw stuff, you see somebody just walking up there to look and see what you're doing, and you have to stop and say hey dude you gotta get back, you know, you're too close.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
Jay: If you're asking what inspires us to get up and go out here every day, it's... we're trying to make a living. Like everybody else, it's about the almighty dollar. We've got bills to pay just like everybody else does, and these attachments that we use allow us to be efficient and make pretty good money at it. I mean, at the end of the day, customer pays, customer's happy, we get paid. And then we can pay the bills.
Craig: You can do a really good job or a really sorry job, and you might do a job and somebody goes, "I can't ever get mine to do that. How do you do that?" And so, if you can do something like that, that's cool and it's kind of like a challenge every day to really get it as nice as you can get it. And you want that customer to go, "My gosh." And it's really cool and it's self-gratification. You don't get a lot of that in this world now.
We're both old school, we've farmed all our lives, we were raised in it. I mean, hell, when you got up in the mornings and it was time to go, it wasn't no joke. You gotta go. You gotta make it happen. You gotta do it right. Don't do a half-assed job, do it right. We try to do that, and the way we approach our customers, you know, we feel like, we've been put down at every turn in farming that you could ever do and we try not to hand that down in this business. We try to be fair, which is what a farmer never gets is fairness.
It's just about being the way the world used to be. Caring about what you're doing and caring about the people you're doing it for. I think that's a lot of it.
A HUGE thank you to Craig and Jay for sharing your Virnig experience.
📢 Shoutout to Brush Sabre’s local Virnig dealership, Linder, for helping coordinate use and/or sale of the V70 Drum Mulcher, the V70 Disc Mulcher, the Power Rake, and the 4-in-1 Bucket seen in these videos.
