Built by Brotherhood: How the Sawatsky Bros. Went All Orange

Some businesses are built from scratch. Others are built from something deeper, from years spent watching, learning, and growing up inside the work itself.

For Josh Sawatsky, that foundation was laid early. Growing up in Chilliwack, BC, Josh was immersed in the family landscaping business from a young age, helping put down roots in the local development community, building relationships with contractors and developers that would span generations.

"I grew up with a lot of developers and customers that we worked alongside for multiple years," Josh says. "Those site labourers who were close to my age are now project managers or higher up in the development industry. My dad was dealing with their fathers. It's been a cool experience, growing up with the industry as well as growing up in it."

From a Tire Machine to a Full Team of Orange

When Josh's father first started the business, the equipment was what most landscapers of that era ran: a tire skid steer with foot controls. 

"You're so limited to what you can do, especially in landscaping," Josh explains. "You're always grading, dealing with different grades of soil. A tire machine isn't ideal, and foot controls are just difficult."

The switch to Kubota came sometime around 2010, and from that point forward, the choice was never in question. As lots shrank and projects became more complex, the fleet grew, always orange. Today, Sawatsky Bros. runs a Kubota SVL compact track loader, KX040 and U17 mini excavators, and a KC70 track carrier.

"Our lineup of equipment is literally what lets us do what we're able to do," Josh says. 

What keeps him loyal isn't just familiarity, it's performance. He points to the consistency of Kubota's hydraulic system across machines as something that makes a real operational difference, especially when training newer operators.

"Some equipment, you move from a skid steer to an excavator, and the flow of the hydraulics are so different that it's hard for newer operators to jump from machine to machine. Kubota has such an amazing hydraulic system that it makes operating so easy to learn on and to be really precise with." And then there's the power: "Our KX040 will outperform quite a few other excavators of the same size. It's a real power package."

The Shrinking Backyard Problem, Solved

If you've watched the Fraser Valley develop over the past decade, you know the lots are getting smaller. Homes that once sat on 15,000 to 20,000 square foot properties now sit on lots where the gap between the house and the fence line might be 36 inches, barely enough to pass through a standard gate.

For most landscapers, that means hand work: shovels, wheelbarrows, and days of physical labour. For Sawatsky Bros., it means sending in the U17 and KC70.

"Any yard we go into, whether it's a new development or a residential renovation, it would all have been hand work," Josh explains. "Tearing everything up by hand with a shovel and wheelbarrow takes forever. With the U17 and KC70, we can get the machines back there and fly through a backyard. What used to take four days now takes about a day."

That efficiency extends to his crew and clients. "Our guys are healthier and still happy to be landscaping. And we're able to save costs for us and our customers, because there's so much less time spent on site."

One upcoming project in Abbotsford tells the story well: a mountainside backyard with three tiers of deteriorating wood retaining walls, accessed through a 52-inch passage. The plan involves sourcing specific rock from a gravel pit, shuttling it to site, transferring it through the buggy, and building the wall – three machines operating in sequence, each playing a different role.

Landscaping as a Living Art Form

Ask Josh what drives him, and the answer isn't square footage or contract volume. It's creation.

"I've always been a fairly artsy person. Whether it's drawings or leather work, stamping and that kind of thing," he says. "When an artist does something, they have a passion from start to finish. Landscaping is the same thing, just on a much larger scale. We're able to create an art piece with machinery, with crews, with large pieces of material. Being able to create this massive painting that's real life; it's super cool."

A recent project in Fort Langley captures it best. The client didn't have a picture to point to. They had a feeling – an old-world European aesthetic they couldn't quite articulate. Josh and the team sourced rock from Squamish, stone from China, and brought in a pond installation company for one of their finest installs. What the client imagined but couldn't name, Sawatsky Bros. built.

"It's about being upfront about what you can get and then doing everything you can to find the rest," he says.

The Dealer That Grew Up with Them

Woven through all of it is a relationship with their Kubota dealer that stretches back further than most business partnerships, back to when Josh first walked through those dealership doors as a kid.

"Going into a place like that for the first time, it's like going into a candy store," he recalls. Their contact, Matt, has been part of the story since the beginning, growing from salesperson to sales manager over the years.

"After 15 years of dealing with the same person, they pretty much become family," Josh says. "You become embedded in the Kubota family and you just get prouder and prouder of the equipment you're using and the brand you're representing. Our Instagram is basically a full-time sponsorship at this point."

It's that kind of pride, earned, not manufactured, that says everything about where Sawatsky Bros. is headed.

"There's not really any reason not to go with Kubota," Josh says simply. "Power, visibility, smoothness. You're going to get all three, and you're never going to have an issue. It's a very easy decision."

Sawatsky Bros. is a family-owned landscape installation and maintenance company based in Chilliwack, BC, serving the Fraser Valley for over 20 years.