Member Profile

Power Planter Inc.

Loda, IL 60948 (630) 240-0643 www.powerplanter.com

by Meta Levin

When Greg Niewold talks about

Power Planter Inc., family is his optimum word. His grandfather started it, he owns it, his aunt works in the office, his father and uncle are still around and his employees tell him they feel a part of the family.

When Niewold bought the company from his grandfather in 2015, there were two full time employees – his aunt and one person in the shop. Now there are fifteen full time employees. “My staff loves a challenge and they love working with each other,” says Niewold. “We are sitting down here in the middle of a corn field in central Illinois doing some fun things that nobody knows about or that even exist.”

Power Planter Inc. was founded more than 30 years ago on a farm that has been in Niewold’s family for six generations. His grandfather designed and sold augers, which he manufactured under the name, Hydra Fold Auger Inc. The fully contained eleven foot to sixteen-foot-long tubes were used by farmers to move corn, soybeans, wheat and fertilizer around their fields.

The business expanded when a groundskeeper from the University of Illinois approached him about designing an auger that could be used to plant trees, shrubs and flowers on the campus. He did and the company moved along until 2015 when he sold Power Planter to Greg Niewold, his grandson. “Since then, things have been going gangbusters,” says Niewold. In 2020, Niewold took ownership of Hydra Fold and shut it down in 2021.

Over the years, Power Planter has evolved and now offers a variety of sizes, models and even accessories for both professionals and home gardeners. It has expanded and now sells its products all over the United States, as well as in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Fiji and countries throughout Europe. The products, however, are US made with domestically sourced materials, says Niewold.

“I am fascinated by all the uses,” says Niewold, who points to one of his larger distributors in Sydney, Australia, who sold augers for use to dig termite bate stations. The job, which Niewold was told used to take four days, now takes about four hours.

Last summer Niewold sold a couple of augers to a landscape contractor in Florida, who, like many, was having trouble finding enough labor. Later, the customer reported that he had removed his “help wanted” signs, because his crews were “working three times faster,” says Niewold.

Irrigation contractors are using the augers for digging holes for moisture probes. Others are used for planting, digging post holes and installing fences.

His Australian distributor came to him in a roundabout way. The couple had a photography studio, but, for a background, needed to plant 20,000 bulbs. They bought one auger and it worked so well that they shut down the photography business and became a distributor for Power Planter.

With that experience, Power Planter has become a partner with a bulb company out of Texas, which helps get the products aimed at home gardeners into retail establishments and garden centers.

Niewold’s grandfather was an ILCA member for a long time, but the membership lapsed when Niewold took over. Last year, he came back, in large part because his outside salespeople pushed him to be a part of iLandscape. “The association provides us with visibility,” he says.

Staffing their iLandscape booth has provided unexpected opportunities. One of those there was the chief welder. When a customer complained about the welds, he found himself talking with the man in charge. It turned what could have been a bad situation into a positive one, he says.

Niewold was an agricultural and industrial arts teacher at Prairie Central High School when the opportunity to buy his grandfather’s company came up. His wife, Lisa, was a fourth-grade teacher. They have four children, ages eleven to two years old. He enjoys athletics and used to play basketball, but now gets most of his pleasure from being a father, husband and working at Power Planter. “I get a ton of enjoyment out of being the boss of the company,” he says.