No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. Most women work one shift at the office or factory and a second shift at home. These women work in the landscape field and a second shift at home. Thank you, girls, for making a difference to our team. We are proud to have you at our company. #damascenolandscape #landscapephotography #landscapeteam #girlspower💪 #girlsonfield
Land of Opportunity
Brazilian comes to America, grows family business
During the mid-1980s, an economic crisis struck Brazil. As
a result, between 1986 and 1990 approximately 1.4 million Brazilians emigrated to other parts of the world.
In 1988, Sebastian Damasceno and his wife left their native Brazil and migrated to the U.S. to seek a better way of life, leaving their children to be raised by grandparents as they established citizenship and a residential landscaping business in Connecticut.
One of the Damascenos’ children, Eddie, would ultimately join them upon his graduation from middle school. As a boy growing up on the family farm in Brazil, young Ed developed a passion for operating tractors, and the idea of moving to a country with more opportunity and working in the family business appealed to him. In 1997, at age 13, he came to Shelton, Conn. and started working in the family business, cutting lawns and maintaining residential landscapes.
“When I finished high school, I knew I wanted something different other than just going to college, so I went to work full-time for my Dad,” Eddie recalls.
Sebastian Damasceno elected to retire in 2008 when business slowed during the recession. He sold a piece of the business to his son, who was able to repay the loan in half the time they had agreed upon.
Acting on the advice of a friend, in 2010 Eddie shifted the focus from residential to commercial landscaping and maintenance, and the business went to the next level. It was during that same year that he formally established Damasceno’s Landscape & Construction.
“It was tough in the beginning, especially when I was doing residential because the recession affected everybody,” Eddie recalls. “But once the recession ended and we started doing commercial properties, the business just took off.”
All-purpose contractor
Since that time, Damasceno’s has been on a steady growth curve. Today, the Shelton, Conn.-based business maintains approximately 200 commercial properties.
Working in a 150-mile radius that includes Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Damasceno’s also has its own hauling division, and performs a full range of site preparation work including excavating, grading, underground utilities and concrete.
“You can’t have four, five guys sitting on a jobsite waiting for a load of stone,” Eddie says. “So when you own your own truck, you go get whatever you want on time and you can control the scheduling, which helps with maintaining due dates on our jobs.”
That same philosophy is at work in the contractor’s ability to perform all aspects of site preparation, including concrete, which is a new capability added within the last year.
“Usually when we do site work, we do the whole nine yards,” Eddie says. “We get the trees cut, remove the stumps and strip and screen the topsoil. Now that we do our own concrete, it helps us so we don’t have any slow time.”
Damasceno’s has 12 haul truck drivers and two crews that do all the sitework, including excavation and pouring foundations.
“Now we can self-perform it, and we just dig and form, and we pour,” Eddie says. “This helps me control the scheduling. As the other crew is doing the site utilities and completing all the underground work, we backfill the foundation and it’s ready for concrete sidewalks, curbs and asphalt.”
Increased efficiency
As Damasceno’s continues to diversify and expand, Caterpillar is the equipment supplier of choice to help perform jobs more efficiently. Currently, about 70 percent of Damasceno’s fleet is comprised of Cat® machines.
“It’s incredible how much faster you can complete a job with Cat machines,” Eddie says. “It’s the power when we’re digging with the excavators, and the same goes for the wheel loader when we’re transporting material from one end of the jobsite to the other.
“I actually have the guys fighting over the Cat machines whenever we start a new job,” he says. “If we don’t have a Cat excavator on the job, the guys ask, ‘How come we can’t have the 330 or the 315 here?’”
Damasceno likes the ease of transporting the 315F Excavator for small to mid-size jobs.
“It works very well to move it around on our triaxle trailer,” he says. “You don’t need a permit to transport it. It’s a very unique machine, and it fits perfectly on the trailer. And the lifting capacity of the 315F is very good—you can do medium to good-sized jobs with that machine.”
“Cat machines are very popular in Brazil, and that’s what we used there on the farm,” Eddie says. “Let’s say you buy a machine and you use it for four or five years, the value stays pretty solid on your trade in. So that helps a lot versus other brands of equipment that lose their value fairly quickly.
“I started with one piece of Cat equipment, and every year we’re switching more of our fleet to Cat units because of the service behind them,” Damasceno says. “At the end of the day, a new machine is always nice but the service behind it is going to determine how much better the machine performs compared to other brands. And with the service we receive from our Cat dealer, H.O. Penn, it’s a night and day difference.”
For snow removal at the I-95 rest stops, Damasceno’s utilizes Cat 262 Skid Steer Loaders equipped with sectional snow plow attachments in combination with a 924K Wheel Loader.
“The comfort level for our operators in the skid steers is great,” Eddie says. “The guys love the heated seats and the backup cameras. There’s no fatigue, and they just plow multiple hours with no complaints. There’s no stopping to rest—they just keep going.
“And the fuel efficiency is unbelievable,” he adds. “We can plow all day, all night with just one full tank. Back in the day, we used to burn probably twice as much as fuel as the new machines do now.”
A family affair
Even as the company continues to grow, Damasceno’s remains a family business. Sebastian came out of retirement and drives one of the company’s distinctive black and green haul trucks. Ed’s uncle, Romyson, serves as an equipment operator. In 2007, Eddie married Ana who also came from Brazil.
Ana went to work for the business in 2009, where she currently serves as vice president, working both in the office and the field when needed. She is also attending community college, studying business management and landscape architecture.
“When you live in Brazil, it’s not that easy to build your own life unless you have a lot of money and you have your family to help you,” Ana says. “I came here so I could join the business and learn new things to make my own life.”
Eddie and Ana’s goal is to grow the business further and eventually pass it on to their children, who will be entrusted with carrying on the family legacy of hard work and dependability.
“When our customers call, they want a fast response; they want us to solve their issues,” Eddie says. “They don’t want us to add to the problem. That’s the reason why they hire you. And we’re very good at that.”
Sidebar 1:
What he likes about his Cat dealer
“When we’re on the job and we discover that we need to rent another machine as soon as possible, it’s reassuring to be able to text our H.O. Penn sales rep and be told that the machine will be delivered to the jobsite the next morning,” says Eddie Damasceno, owner of Damasceno’s Landscapes & Construction.
“The service we receive from out Cat dealer is incredible,” he adds. “We work to provide a high level of service to our clients, so when you get the same level of service in return, it’s a very good feeling—it gives us peace of mind.”
Damasceno Landscape & Construction,
The landscape company you can trust, call us today for a free Estimate O: 203-612-7227 - C: 203-223-4426
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