Rolls of freshly harvested sod sit on a truck bed ready for delivery at the farm for Carolina Green Corporation in Fairview, NC on Friday, July 26, 2024. Carolina Green Corp grows premium sod, works with Charlotte FC, Carolina Panthers, Kansas City Chiefs and many more college and professional teams across the country.
When a trip is “local” — in other words less than a six-hour drive — often the grass will be put on a truck with an open-air truck bed. For longer trips, refrigerated trucks are summoned.
Machines load the open-air truck bed for local road trips for Carolina Green Corp. To be clear: “local” means any distance under a six-hour truck ride from their Indian Trail, N.C., location.
From there, the installation process varies from facility to facility. But when the field is going over a turf, like it does at Bank of America Stadium, the installation team puts a black adhesive tiling — geotextiles — over the turf, and then the heavy grass lays over top of that. Then, one specialized machine — known as a “SideKick” apparatus — squeezes all the grass slabs together and makes for a safe, play-now playing surface. In the case of the Chelsea-Real Madrid contest in Bank of America Stadium, the grass was laid on Thursday, Aug. 1, five days before it would be played on.
Carolina Green Corp didn’t disclose the cost of company projects. Forbes reported in 2022 that it cost around $350K to lay premium sod in an NFL stadium.
Carolina Green Corp laying down grass in Commanders field, home of the Washington Commanders.
Sometimes, the grass can be used for six to eight games. Other times, for special events, it’s just used once and then removed. The grass then either gets donated, laid overtop a compost (the weight helps with that) or gets disposed.
Danny Losito, the director of grounds for Tepper Sports and Entertainment since 2020, described working with Carolina Green Corporation as a joy. He added that he visits the farm a bunch — a benefit of it being local — and that the Price family “is just good people.”
“They participate in a lot of our projects,” Losito said. “We visit at the farm a lot. … They get what we do. They have experience in what we do. And we have really good communication. We’ve talked about our industry, and Chad’s definitely a leader in our industry.”
All this before 10 a.m.
The harvest is complete by just past 9 a.m. on the aforementioned Friday, and Chad Price retires to his office. He’s rarely here, especially during the summertime, because he’s traveling and supervising field installations far and wide.
Step inside the log-cabin office and you’re reminded of family everywhere. There’s a photo of his son, Matthew, winning a high school wrestling state championship on the back wall. There’s another of his daughter, Jessica, on his desk. His older son, Jackson, lives just up the road. His wife, Kerry, who runs the business alongside Chad, has an office adjacent to him. There’s a Bible verse in the “lobby,” which feels more like a living room, dedicated to Don, Chad’s father.
Chad started working right after college. He played football at Virginia Tech and earned a degree in agronomy. It was there he met his wife, who was on the volleyball team and who graduated with a degree in accounting. In 1988, he began a company called “Chad’s Green And Clean” — a lawn care and street-cleaning company — and then after five years joined forces with Kerry to create Carolina Green Corp.
The company has evolved a bunch since being incorporated in 1993. But over the past 14 years, it’s most known for its premium sod, the sandy grass grown on a farm in rural North Carolina that sets the stage for special sports moments across the country every year.
“Being from Pittsburgh, I went to college and thought I was going to work in New York, in a high-rise,” Kerry said with a smile. “And I ended up on a farm. So God’s got other plans for you. I love it, and my kids love it, they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.”
Neither could Chad. By 10 a.m. on that Friday, the rain is pouring down, the grass is on the truck, you’re exhausted, and he’s back in the fields.
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Publish date : 2024-08-05 15:00:00
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