Roadkill Landscaping founders shift focus to commercial projects in Grand Junction

At 16 years old, Anthony Heathco and Colton Roush were looking for extra pocket money to buy trendy shoes.

In a Nextdoor post, Roush’s mother let the community know that her son was looking for work. A man responded, saying that he had plenty of work for the teens to do around his property.

“He let us work as many hours as we wanted for $15 an hour,” Heathco said. “Then we started working for a landscaping company in town, but we were always doing side work.”

Although their youth was an obstacle when they first started out, the friends persevered.

“It’s better now that we’ve grown some facial hair,” Roush said. “For a long time, people didn’t trust us to spend money on their landscaping. We lost a lot of jobs because of being too young.”

Hiring was equally bizarre for the teenagers. They posted ads on the Indeed job board only for older applicants to show up to an interview conducted by a 19-year-old.

They bootstrapped the business in the early years, borrowing their parents’ shovels and wheelbarrows and investing everything they earned into the company.

“We had no money,” Roush said. “We had to save up every year to buy something new.”

The turning point came when they upgraded their toolkit. Investing in three pieces of Bobcat equipment enabled Heathco and Roush to transition from manual labor to major earthmoving contracts.

Now, six years later, the friends are business partners and co-owners of Roadkill Landscaping, a Grand Junction enterprise with six employees and a fleet of commercial equipment.

The machinery empowered them to execute a blank-canvas project in Loma. Given total freedom by the client, the team designed a custom xeriscape front yard and a massive, in-ground fire pit sunk 4 feet into the ground with seating for 15 people.

The project was so distinct that it even drew the attention of Bobcat corporate, which featured the young entrepreneurs in a commercial.

These days, the company has enough work to keep its crew busy year-round, but Heathco and Roush have bigger ambitions.

The next frontier for Roadkill is the commercial sector. The company aims to go toe-to-toe with the region’s established firms for lucrative bids.

To get there, Heathco and Roush are looking to add excavators to their fleet.

“The big thing is to keep growing,” Roush said. “We just work all the time, and we love making our clients happy.”