By Nancy Brumback, Contributing Writer
Business name: CMS, Inc.
Address: 379 South St., Marlborough
President: Patrick Mauro
Contact: 508-481-0011
Website:? www.cmsinc-ma.com
What products do you provide?
“We supply bulk landscaping materials??”bark mulch, loam, crushed stone, colored stones, gravel,” said Patrick Mauro, president of CMS, Inc., the construction materials and services company his father, David, started in 1965 and incorporated in 1977. “Homeowners are our biggest customers in this part of our business. They call when they start to spruce up their yards.”
And you deliver these products?
“People can come and pick up what they want if they have a pickup truck because it's easier to back up to the bed and shovel mulch out. But we also deliver, and for the most part, we can do same-day deliveries. During the busy season, these next few weeks, it's better to call during the week and schedule a delivery, especially this year with the late spring, people are all starting to work on their yards at once. We have trucks that can handle from one ton all the way up to 30 tons.”
How do you know how much mulch or stone or soil you need?
“There's a calculator on our website (www.cmsinc-ma.com). You can enter the area and the depth you want and it will give you the quantity of material you need. It's not just for mulch but for all the products??”stone, topsoil,” Mauro said.
“We can advise on uses for products, but for something like mulch, it's all a wood-based product so it's simply color preference. The hemlock holds its color the longest because it has a reddish tone naturally. Black mulch is really popular right now, second only to hemlock. If people are selling their home, they might go down to a less expensive grade because it looks almost as nice.
“An alternative is decorative stone because you just need to put it down once.”
All these products are on display at your headquarters?
“Yes. People can come in and browse. We give them a map of the area, and they can walk around and look. There are different colors of mulch and stone. We have at least a half-dozen colors of decorative stone and different sizes as well.”
The display yard is open Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. It's closed Sundays.
Do you do landscaping work?
“No, we supply the products for landscaping contractors. Our excavation work is all commercial. When we do an excavation, we truck the soil back here and screen and process it into the topsoil we sell. That's where topsoil comes from. If you see a new road or parking lot going in, there was a layer of topsoil there, and it goes to people like us to be reused.
“Our topsoil price has actually come down lately because I got a good buy on some local topsoil and didn's have to truck it from far away. Some mulch suppliers have also come down a little this year.”
