Using Technology to Reduce Risk in the Landscape Industry with Bryan Mours

Rancho Mesa's Vice President of the Landscape and Tree Care Group, Drew Garcia, interviews Bryan Mours, founder of Mours Enterprises, where they explore the technology being used to reduce risk within the landscape industry.

Show Notes: ⁠⁠https: ⁠Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter⁠, Mours Enterprises LLC

Host: ⁠⁠⁠Drew Garcia⁠⁠⁠

Guest: ⁠⁠⁠Bryan Mours

Producer/Editor: ⁠Megan Lockhart

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “Breaking News Intro” by nem0production

© Copyright 2026. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Drew Garcia: Welcome back, everybody. I'm Drew Garcia, Vice President and Landscape Group Leader here at Rancho Mesa, and today we're super excited. We've got an industry veteran in the office today. Someone that, you know, this great industry attracts you to great people. And I got a chance to meet Brian Mours nine years ago now. I've had dinner with him in Costa Rica. We've had laughs in Arizona and Maui. I mean, all the destination spots where the conferences will take us. And each time I'm with Brian, I learn more. And today we brought him in. He's going to talk to us about either emerging technology or capabilities that are available in the industry today, where landscape companies can tap into them and improve their overall risk and safety profile.

So, Brian, could you give a, you know, first of all, welcome, but can you give us a little overview of where you've been in the industry so our audience has an idea of where we're starting?

Brian Mours: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Drew. I appreciate you inviting me in. I mean, yeah, we have known each other for a while now. It's hard to believe it's been probably eight, nine, ten, almost ten years that we've known each other, which is fantastic. Again, that's why I love the industry. I get to meet fresh, exciting people, even in the insurance side of things. And so always a lot of fun.

But anyway, I'm from Wisconsin, as you know, and I know that you have a little bit of history in the state of Wisconsin. So maybe that's how we kind of tie together to. But I've been in the landscape industry almost all my life. I broke off, did some restaurant stuff for a while, but I was 16 years old, I was working at a country club. I was down on the grounds working, plus working in the restaurant at night. One of the bar managers there, he was doing some lawn care and maintenance work on the side during the day and bartending at night. He says, “do you want to join me?” I said, “Yeah, Let's do it. I'll come join you. Let's start a business together.”  And here I am 16, 17 years old, starting a business in the lawn care industry. And it was really, that was my introduction to the industry. And I've been here all my life. I've done everything from owning at that time. We sold that business. I used to sell landscape products when I worked for Lesco, when it was Lesco, before they sold to John Deere Landscapes, and I worked with a lot of landscapers in the area at that time, and helping them kind of grow their business. I learned that what I really enjoyed was helping people in understanding how to run their businesses better and how to make money at their business. And I learned that at Lesco.

And so I work for another landscape company in in Wisconsin, helped them grow their business to over $10 million. I left there and decided I was going to get into the technology side of the industry. And so I've worked for a couple of different technologies over the past 20 years now, believe it or not. And so that's kind of what brought us together, right? The technology. And I saw the importance because we implemented the technology at one of the companies I was GM at, and I saw the importance of technology and how it could help a business grow, succeed, and also kind of, you know, what we're talking about, how it can help in kind of this risk management and really making the workplace a lot safer at these landscape companies, which, let's face it, right? They have a lot of moving parts going on with equipment and such. And so how can we improve upon or at least recognize when we need to improve to make our workplaces safer?

DG: Yeah, absolutely. You know, you flew through the intro. What's really cool about your experience there is your perspective that you bring, you know, so you actually did get to have the, you know, I've done the work and then I've sold the work and I've sold the equipment and the materials that, you know, they've been used to do the work. And then, like you said, you know, work for somebody, help sell a business. And then ultimately, you were on the technology side. So perspective's huge and you're able to glean from all of that. And that's why I think every time I talk to you, always, you know, I'm picking something up or I'm learning something new. And technology has really made a big impact on the landscape industry. In my short time, you know, I've been doing it 10 years now. I've watched as businesses have been able to scale and build sounder processes, better documentation programs, which all roll down to help a business succeed, but also really manage and minimize overall risk and safety.

And to me, you know, there's a couple key areas. We're talking about how do you keep your people safe, number one, right? Protecting your assets. So trucks, trailers, equipment, how are you managing that, and how can technology maybe help you in those areas? And then the one that I think is most emerging is, and it's been around for a while with snow, but just contract management and documentation, those are key pieces to, you know, maximizing your ability to prove what work was done, when it was done, you know, per some scope of a contract, what does the Endemic Hold Harmless language look like within that contract? And I know technology can help you manage that.

So I guess in your experience, what are some areas that you've seen landscape businesses either start to now grow more into technology to help in those areas? And, you know, do you have any examples of, you know, where someone could take that today or, you know, if I don't know where to start, you know, what would be a good spot?

BM: Yeah. There's all kinds of technology out there, but again, it's really in how you use the technology. You mentioned the documentation, right? I mean, we were all doing it on Word docs and et cetera, but we never really filed those in a good place. They were all over the map in different files on our computer. And so having a centralized location for these documents, and again, let's face it, we should have some legal help with those in order to make sure our documentation is accurate, right? To make sure it covers us in the case of snow, let's say, for example, slip and falls, or even breakage of something, you know, our liability is pretty high out there, right, in this industry. Coming from a snow market, I know that firsthand, I've been out there, been there, done that in the industry. And again, where I saw a lot of technology coming into play, as we were adapting it at the company I was at in Wisconsin, was in looking at different areas of the company in ways to improve how we could make it a more safe, free zone, I guess. Not only at our shop and our office, but also on our job sites.

Surprisingly, and maybe that's, again, why there's a good relationship between us. I was in charge of, when I was at that landscape company, I was in charge of the insurance. I had deal with the setting up the insurance. I would go to insurance classes about safety and safety training and so it's very kind of top of mind to me and it I always took that back to our office one of the things that--obviously time documentation is huge right? But what I’ve found as I train and work with companies that are trying to adopt softwares, they have a hard time understanding the importance of things like logging or tracking safety training. Something as simple as that, right? Insurance agents love it when you're tracking and showing that you're actually doing something to train your people in the area of safety. And So we made a point to have a special task that we would log into, and every week we did our safety trainings, and everyone logged into it, and we knew exactly how much time people were spending in safety training, right? And so that's kind of one area, just a simple area, that we were tracking kind of time that helped us, again, in our risk management.

DG: Yep, and you're so right with that, and we can kind of equate it to the underwriting process when we're working with our carriers is everyone can, you know, if you look at a supplemental application where everybody fills out their operations and this is what I'm doing, you know, you can say, do you do safety meetings, you know, check, yes, we do those. And then, you know, what the underwriter is going to do is they're going to look at that and they're going to ask us the question, you know, based on loss history because they're going to look back at the claims to see if there's any issues. And it might say that they're doing safety training, but if you look at the last five years for work-related injuries, it might show that are they really doing those trainings, you know, because we still see a lot of activity happening in the past.

And that's where what I like about the technology piece, if you're tracking that, you can package it up and then you can use it within the underwriting process and not only show, you know, either, “Hey, we had these issues, but here's what we're doing today, which is different from the past that we feel like is going to help us better manage what you're, you know, what you're looking at.” And that could be, you know, a tool to give the underwriter a better idea as to where the company's headed, as opposed to just looking in the rearview mirror and, you know, what's happened in the past. And I think you said it best. It's kind of the easiest to me entry level way to get into utilizing software within safety, specifically when it comes to those, you know, tailgate style or formalized annual trainings for the, for the crews.

BM:Absolutely. I mean, we did a, we did an initial, like every spring, we did a kickoff because everyone, spring and fall, because everyone would forget how to run their summer equipment, of course being up in Wisconsin, they forgot how to run all their summer equipment through the winter months. So we had retrained. I don't care if the person was there for 20 years at our company. They got trained on all the equipment again, just like the new guys that were just starting that year at our company. They were trained the same way so that we were all kind of learning together and the same happened in the winter, all right? Let's retrain on snowplows and salters to make sure we're injuries.

DG: How about, you know, vehicles before we started talking here, you were mentioning a story just on, you know, when you guys used to manage your fleet, which is probably, to me, probably the biggest exposure, especially for a maintenance company that is very fleet intensive. You know, got to have a lot of trucks to get everybody to all the different job sites. You know, more trucks feels like more exposure, more opportunity for claims to happen. Where are ways where you think or you've seen technology improve maybe somebody's ability to better manage that or maybe isolate opportunity from, you know, turning into an issue?

BM: The fleet side of it was, again, very important to us, right? And again, some of the things that we worked on, and the only way we learned that we needed to work on it, again, was because of data we were collecting through the technology piece, right? And so one of the things that, again, this is probably vehicle and people, right, is this idea of route optimization, right? How do I minimize my windshield time, my drive time, right? Everyone says, well, you're just trying to make more productive time then in a day, and of course I am, right? I'm going to do everything I can as well to make more productive time so that we can have more revenue per day for our crews. However, the other thing that it's doing is less time behind the wheel, three, four guys in a truck, the less, I'm minimizing my risk by not having them on the road, not having them behind the windshield, right?

But we've, we also did, obviously we did We had things like GPS units to make sure we were tracking, you know, with speeding, with harsh breaking. We were very early to jump in on GPS technology. That was huge for us to get a system, and it was so much fun to call somebody. Processes were very important in documenting kind of the things that, you know, like everyone leaves the yard with their seatbelt on. No using your cell phone while you're driving. No, you know, we were doing this 25 years ago. You know, dash cams are yelling at you now when you're, when you're doing that. But we were doing that, you know, 25 years ago. Well, I would, I would get a speeding alert on the GPS unit. And then so I'd call the driver. And, of course, he'd pick up every time. And I'd say, okay, first of all, you were speeding and now you're answering your phone while you're driving. Right. And so I'd get them on two cases.

But my window happened to be like right next to the driveway where all the trucks drove out of. And anytime people saw me looking out the window, you never saw people reach up over their shoulder faster than to grab their seatbelt. “Oh, Brian's watching. Let's put our seatbelt on.” But it was creating good behaviors, right? It was pretty soon it was more and more people that were, were not reaching up or not, right. And that's, that was a part of it, right? But a lot of it was based around what I was seeing and getting from the technology that I was using.

DG: And that's so important to use the technology. Like, you know, like you're saying. So that's something that comes back to us quite often when we're either negotiating a renewal or talking to an emerging underwriter who might be interested in this industry and they're trying to learn more about the exposures. They want to know not only now is the business using GPS or are they using dash cams, but are they managing that information when they get it because it's super important to act on the information you've got, right? So if you're getting constant speeding alerts from an employee and you're getting those messages, but you're not doing anything from a, you know, training standpoint on that, then, you know, what's the point there, right? And getting--it can almost create maybe more liability for you just because you're neglecting the information in that case, right? So those best in class companies are coming up with those systems to manage the data so that they can help the driver behavior to your point. That's what the change, you know, that's what you're trying to do is just create better driver behavior so that they're not, you know, more likely to continue to have, have those bad habits.

And how about, so, you know, the equipment itself, even in my short time, like I mentioned, 10 years doing this, the gas to battery, especially here in California, it's really big, seeing the cost of these batteries and going, oh, my goodness, it's like the cost of a piece of equipment, almost to itself. And so we're navigating ways to, you know, better and more appropriately ensure that. That's thought through. Because in the past for us, you never really thought about, you know, insuring gasoline or something like that because that was the fuel for the piece of equipment. But now the battery is a key component to insurance and insurability, but also just overall minimizing theft because these batteries are expensive. The piece of equipment's expensive. They're powerful. They can, you know, they can do a lot. Are there areas where a business can help improve their, like, theft prevention program? I'm sure there's ways they can, there's usage that you've seen out there. What are some areas there on the equipment side?

BM: Yeah, I think, I think first and foremost, right, making sure that you know what equipment you have. I mean, we've talked about that before. People don't do a good job of keeping their asset inventory to date, right? Because they wouldn't know if a string trimmer was missing or a backpack motor was missing because they don't even know if they have it sometimes. So that's first and foremost, right? Always making sure you're staying up to date with your asset inventory, right? But there's emerging technology out there that is, and I'm a part of one of those groups that is what we're doing is we're putting little like air tags on pieces of equipment. But not only are we using those tags for theft purposes, but we're using them for, again, making sure that the equipment is being utilized every day and utilized on these properties and not just being dragged around in a trailer for all week long.

And again, it was, what it's doing is it's helping people recognize that maybe they don't need to be having as much equipment at their companies. But what, again, from the side of insurance and this theft piece, right, what the, what the devices do is they'll alert the driver that if he showed up at a job site with 10 pieces of equipment. He left the job site with nine, right? It's like, okay, maybe it wasn't him that left one behind, but maybe somebody walked by the trailer and heisted something. I've seen trailer setups, you mentioned electric. I've seen trailer setups where they have the battery racks right along the back door. As you mentioned, those batteries are not cheap. It's very easy for somebody you reach in, grab a battery, and the more we go to electric, the more valuable there's going to be for people to come and just take off the sidewall of a piece of equipment. You just want to try to prevent, in any ways you can, theft. And again, maybe understanding kind of what the utilization is of your equipment, right? Am I using it properly? Am I using it while all of those different things.

DG: And that's where you're getting, you know, both sides of it. Just like you mentioned with GPS, you're getting route efficiency, but you're getting driver behavior. Now on the asset side, you know, side you're getting efficiency and usage of the equipment. And at the same time, it could be a deterrent or a theft prevention measure that's going to play into the insurance side. So building more value, you know, with the software. What am I truly getting, if you're getting two ends of the spectrum there, it's pretty nice. You're kind of doubling down on your overall investment. So very interesting.

Anything else out there? You know, I know I go to the big expos and I walk those floors and I'm amazed at, you know, some of the equipment that's out there, autonomous, you know, mowers and, you know, you've got the hillside mowers on remote control. It just seems like the industry super creative and it's there obviously catering towards the need to become you know more efficient anything else that you're seeing out there that is interesting to you or where you think you know there could be more either dual use or major impact to risk and safety for landscape companies?

BM: Well I think one of the things that and we talked about this a little bit in the beginning is this idea of what I’m presenting to my customer is what I'm delivering on, right? There's software coming out where I can do actually tracking of the people and their movement around the property. For snow, that's huge, right? Because if I get a slip and fall and I can prove that that truck was in that area and that truck did salt that area during this time prior to the slip and fall, right? That's huge when it comes to a liability. The same goes true in the summer months, right? Even if it's something where a client is questioning your behaviors or whether or not you're maintaining their property to the way you set it up as far as the scope of work within your contracts, right? You can have that proof of, yes, we maintained your property, we maintained it fully, we did all the work that we promised you, right? And we're not, you know, we're not trying to kind of short our contract with you, right?

Because I see risk, you know, kind of in two forms. One of them, you know, from an insurance side, the other side is from kind of a churn side, right? If I'm churning work and I'm losing work because I'm not providing what I'm telling people in my contracts, right? That's huge, you know, that's really something that people, again, have to be extremely worried about. And I was always very diligent about making sure that if I told a homeowner or a business that I'm going to provide 28 mows that season, I'm going to provide 28 mows that season. And we're not going to short mow. We're going to maintain the entire property for those 28 times. You know, it's going to differ when I'm doing those mowing throughout the season, but that's when I do it.

And so this tracking gives you the ability to kind of see where the movement of the crews around the property, A, it helps with efficiency on those properties, but B, it helps you to show the client, yes, we did, are maintaining your property. I've worked with the company in Canada, you know, huge snow company. We had special reports in the software that we developed so that their liability with their clients, because some clients required like every event they needed a full report of exactly what was done, who was on site, what the times were they were on site, what the amount of product was they put down. And now with kind of more of the tracking of movement through the property, now I can also show that as well.

DG: You know, at the end there, if there's that ability to just show the customer, you know, we all want that. We want to be able to show the customer, you know, we are doing a good job and this is what it looks like. If you're able to do that to a certain extent, it's hard for someone else to duplicate it. If they don't have that within their process and they can't do it, but the customer comes accustomed to seeing it a certain way, it does create an advantage for you in a sense where they were just, they were happy, you know, very pleased with the service, but also you kind of wrapped it up nicely for them because they had something that they could refer back to. If they had to go share results with somebody else that maybe doesn't directly get to see your work every day, it's kind of nice to have that stewardship, you know, type of piece, it sounds like that this might be able to create.

BM: Absolutely. The question is, where does that liability stand? And again, as you mentioned, right, if I'm not doing anything with the data, right, I'm not notifying an HOA, a board of directors, a business, a homeowner about those issues. In theory, I could be somewhat liable for somebody hurting themselves on the property. Now, if I go out and I expose that and I show them that either through, and again, the video is a great way to show it because it's very, very visual. But even having a low spot in a lawn that somebody, or it's a hole in the lawn, right, that was somebody falls into the hole. A little kid catches his leg, well, I saw it, you know, every time I went out there in mode, I saw it, or we avoided that area and used a string trimmer in that area because there was a big hole in the yard. Well, I need to be doing something about it as a contractor, as somebody that is responsible for the maintaining this property. And so I need to bring that to their attention.

DG: Right. And that's a key point. And that really hits home on the liability side for landscape maintenance and that was the uh my topic out at Elevate this year was right around premise liability and the exact hazard you just brought up was an example we used too. And you know with technology and I’ll kind of close with this too because I think it's always people are resistant because it's got to be easy you know so that's you know you can repeat it and I think sometimes things look really interesting and appealing but man you know to roll something out or to really implement something can be a challenge and in what resources do you have available to do that. You know, talk to the listeners about maybe are there areas where you can help with that? Is that something that someone could reach out to you if they had questions about, you know, implementing technology and just going on your experiences? That's something that you would be open to listening in and on?

BM: Yeah, absolutely. The team I've put together at Mour's Enterprises, our focus is 100% on technology training, technology use, getting the best out of the technology that you have. I can show people through that capture of data how they need to improve maybe their workflow around their yard just because their crews are spending too much time in the yard and you're seeing all this kind of congestion in the yard and it's recognized through the time capture. If people don't understand how important that is to running their company, as much as it is just capturing their time and their job, right, they're not getting the best use out of their technology. And so our team helps people understand, again, the logic.

I always tell people it's not about the button pushing in the technology, but it's logic of the technology. We built this technology specifically to really help people, you know, again, guide them through better production management of their company, through better safety in their trucks, equipment usage efficiencies out in the field. But again, that's the logic that's built into it. And you don't see that in the buttons that you're pushing, right? So we help with that knowledge and that learning.

And for our team, right, it's really about getting people utilizing the new technology that's coming out there. And a lot of the new technology, what we're trying to focus more on is more of this hands off mentality. You mentioned our asset tracking technology. It's basically just going in and read the data.

And we're even making it such that we're going to notify you of the data you should be looking at so that it doesn't have to be. But my team, that's what we're here for. We're here because it's difficult. I've been fortunate to be able to understand the logic of software when I implemented the software at the company I was at right at the turn of the century and before people were putting technology in their landscape companies, I was fortunate to learn the technology, learn it well, and then kind of pass that along to other people, my knowledge.

DG: So critical. Yeah, Brian, I think, yeah, for me, I think about it with technology. I mean, it's in the insurance space too. You know, we have it as well. But watching the landscape industry grow, I always get excited about seeing the new technology. And I always like, you know, I feel like it's more of if I equate it to golf. It's like the new driver. You know, I'm always interested in that. I just want it. Let me go to the range, see how far I can hit it. But really, the execution of your golf game is going to be right around the green. But that's going to take time and you need to have somebody who knows what they're doing and teach you how to kind of do the little things so that you really can make your golf game effective. And I get too lost in, “Oh, this looks really exciting. I'm just going to go use this on the driving range.” And then, you know, I have no plan after that. And that's where having someone like you to lean on to help through those processes is super important. And we appreciate you coming in and sharing some of that information with us. We'll make sure to include your contact information in the podcast notes. And Brian, thanks again for coming out to San Diego. We appreciate it.

BM: Thank you, Drew. I appreciate being here.

DG: Thank you.