Hall Manufacturing Inc.

The products made by Hall Manufacturing Inc. of North Little Rock are seen routinely by motorists.

“If you see a mower on the side of the highway in Arkansas or most Southern states,” said Robert Hall Jr., company president, “it’s probably ours.”

Hall Manufacturing, known as G.L. Turner Co. until 2001, produces lawn mowers that specialize in mowing along shoulders of highways in 27 states. They go by the name “Bush-Whacker.”

The Bush-Whacker first went into production in 1965. Four years later, Robert Hall Sr., 65, quit his job as a water well driller at Hamburg and used of all of his assets to buy G.L. Turner. He moved his family to a one-bedroom Little Rock apartment from southeast Arkansas. Hall’s son, Robert A. Hall Jr., took over as president this year, and the senior Hall has switched to the position of vice president and secretary/treasurer.

The company’s history goes back to the 1920s when it sold plow parts from a horse-drawn wagon. Now, the company sells more than 1,000 mowers annually and is up to about $9 million in annual sales for 2003 – a 550 percent increase over the last nine years. The company has 63 full-time employees.

After years of doing business with state highway departments across the country, in 2001 the Halls introduced the mowers to the agriculture machinery retail world.

The younger Hall said the secrets to the company’s success have been a quality product, good price, good relationships with employees and exceptional customer service.

“If I’m putting my name on it, I want to make sure it’s 100 percent,” Hall said. “If it’s not, we’ll fix it. We like to kid that we sell a Cadillac for a Taurus price.”

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