Chuck Ohnmacht always knew he’d start his own business. He wanted something of his own to see what he could accomplish.
Demolition was never the goal, and it wasn’t his dream, but fate and a strong work ethic have taken him through more than 25 years of highs and lows in the construction industry and made him a finalist for Equipment World’s 2025 Contractor of the Year award.
Small Beginnings
Ohnmacht got his start with machinery at a young age in Pennsylvania. Born in Brooklyn, New York, his parents’ decision to take the family to a small farm and become self-sufficient – raising hogs, chickens, goats – taught him the basics of operating tractors, manure spreaders, combines and other heavy machinery.
His father took the family to Wilmington, North Carolina, a few years later and transitioned to installing heat and air conditioning for a local company – eventually coming to own that company. Ohnmacht started working with his father while in high school, ultimately spending 10 years in the HVAC industry. In 1997 while working with his father, he got his first experience in moving dirt as a professional, with a 20-horsepower Kubota tractor
The first Kubota tractor loader backhoe that started Ohnmacht's demolition career.4 Seasons Demolition
“The guy paid me $500 for working each day just to dig bushes up, move some dirt around, bring in some topsoil, or whatnot. And I said, ‘Man, that was pretty good money.’”
Ohnmacht decided to put a small ad in a local classified paper for work with his backhoe and a small dump truck. Soon enough, he had so much work he needed larger machines and trucks.
A truck from the early days of 4 Seasons.4 Seasons Demolition
“That lasted for just a few weeks before I was so busy that I had to have a little bit of help,” says Ohnmacht. “So, I hired my brother-in-law, Jamie Fowler, to help me with it, and he started driving the dump truck, hauling different materials to and from the jobs.”
Ohnmacht quit his job in HVAC and studied for his water and sewer, grading, heavy highway and commercial general contractors licenses.
“By then, I'd hired several more people and bought more dump trucks and bought my first excavator,” says Ohnmacht. “In the beginning, we mainly did clearing work and small demolition jobs, like clearing trees and vegetation and small houses on lots that people wanted to build on. And then eventually started doing site work.
“Within a five-year period, I ended up with about 100 employees, and we were doing about $10 million a year in site work, clearing and demolition.”
Housing Market Crash Brings Hard Times
Like many in the industry, 2007 was a turning point for Ohnmacht’s rising success. He says many of their jobs under contract were canceled, even some already halfway done.
“It literally happened overnight,” says Ohnmacht. “We went from booming and couldn't get the work done fast enough to shut down. People telling you to get your equipment off their site, not getting payments for all the work that you had done, then you get notices of bankruptcy. It’s pretty hard to tell all your employees that we’ve got to scale back. We don't have the work. We don't have anything.”
Ohnmacht explains the details of a recent demolition job to tear down the old administrative offices of the City of Wilmington.Equipment World
During the mid-2000s, Ohnmacht had put 4 Seasons Demolition (then called 4 Seasons Earthworks) under his father’s name due to his marital status. The holding company they’d created for the business – 4 Seasons of Coastal Carolina – ended up going bankrupt along with Ohnmacht’s father, though 4 Seasons Earthworks never did.
“We were able to pay everyone,” he says. “No one suffered a loss from us, with the exception of one of the banks that my father had a note on that could be called at any time.” He says that particular bank saw the economy crashing and called the note due.
He says at the time, the company’s outlook wasn’t too bad, and Ohnmacht believed they’d be able to weather the storm.
“By 2009, we really got a grip for just how bad this thing was going to get,” Ohnmacht says. “And it got really bad, and we basically lost everything. I lost every machine, every truck and every employee, with the exception of Travis Greise who runs my field operations. He's been with me since the beginning. He was my second employee that I hired.”
What’s in a Name?
With nothing left, Ohnmacht decided he wasn’t going to throw in the towel. He began again, with only Greise remaining as his sole employee. He bought a “piece of junk” $2,500 pickup truck and a Hyundai excavator for $12,000 that was so beat up, Ohnmacht says, if you looked at it, you “couldn’t imagine that it would even move.” In 2011, the 4 Seasons Demolition of today was officially born.
4 Seasons Demolition's current fleet contains 15 dump trucks/road tractors and trailers, 10 service trucks, 2 mini excavators, 2 dozers, 9 excavators and 1 heavy duty mechanics truck.Equipment World
“We found a dump truck down the side of the road that wasn't even running,” he says. “It had many parts and pieces missing. We bought that for $3,500, put it back together and got it on the road.”
The name change from 4 Seasons Earthworks reflected a shift in Ohnmacht’s business approach. He would stick exclusively with demolition and expand his territory to all of North Carolina and South Carolina.
“Just being in demolition reopened the door to work for all of the other construction companies that we used to work for before we started doing site work,” he says. “When I started doing site work, they saw me as a competitor, because I was.
“So when I went into just demolition, I put word out to everybody and explained that I'm no longer doing site work. We'd like to have your demolition work. And they all were on board with it. More site work for them, more demolition work for me.”
Paying Off Debts & New Beginnings
The 3 acres that 4 Seasons Demolition calls home today was perhaps one of the few silver linings from the housing market crash.
When the previous owner who owed Ohnmacht for some previous work went bankrupt, Ohnmacht purchased the lot at auction, together with a subcontractor to whom he owed $130,000. After they were the only bidders to show up, Ohnmacht won the lot for $1,200 and gave 2 acres of the original 5-acre plot to the subcontractor to make good on his debt.
4 Seasons Demolition work done for the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2024.4 Seasons Demolition
Ohnmacht says coming out of the housing market crash made him more gun shy. He assesses risk and reward more closely and learned the true value of equity.
“Back then, I would have rolled the dice on almost anything,” he says. “I had a lot of energy, a lot of youth. I would risk things, and they always paid off. But we were so far extended, we had payments of $150,000 a month. And it doesn't take too many months of $150,000 a month before you're buried.
“I tell people this: 'If you start out a business, make sure that you have some equity in that business – get a foundation, get something that is solid.' That's what I didn't have before. Everything I had was financed, no down payment. Now I do the opposite. We started out with junk, but it was paid for.”
Family Operations
Ohnmacht likes to keep the 4 Seasons team family oriented. His sister, Valarie Fowler, is the office manager, handling finances and running the office. His son, Thomas, works as an operator. His brother-in-law, Jamie Fowler, heads up the universal waste division. His mother, Carolyn Ohnmacht, helps with day-to-day errands. His cousin, Vinny Russo, is one of the truck drivers.
Ohnmacht (R) and his sister, Valarie Fowler (L) have worked well as a team since early childhood.4 Seasons Demolition
Besides the main office, the 4 Seasons campus has its own shop for repairs and rebuilds, a parts storage building and a fabrication shop. In the shop, 4 Seasons’ mechanics – all of whom double as either truck drivers or operators – do general repairs and engine swaps and rebuilds. 4 Seasons’ shop has the capacity to work on up to three engines at a time.
4 Seasons technician Trent Greise (right) was exposed to the construction industry as a child when his father, Travis Greise (the first 4 Seasons employee), would bring him to the office.Equipment World
Among these technicians are Travis Greise, field operations foreman and the first employee Ohnmacht hired 22 years ago. Griese’s son, Trent, who Ohnmacht says has been visiting the office most of his life and started working at 4 Seasons 10 years ago, is now the lead mechanic. Griese’s wife, Jennifer Griese, is the trucking manager, and his daughter, Kendall Greise, is one of the truck drivers.
Valarie Fowler (center right) stands in front of the company's demolition of Galloway Hall for the University of North Carolina Wilmington.4 Seasons Demolition
Learnings Lessons from Truck Fires
Ohnmacht says he’s always learning lessons, and one of the most recent came after an electrical fire took out several of the company’s dump trucks. It taught him the real value of something as cheap as installing a master switch on a battery.
Older machinery can benefit from relatively cheap battery master switches.Equipment World
“We had an electrical fire on a Saturday morning, and we lost four dump trucks and a water truck,” he says. “The fire marshal said that it started close to the batteries. We went ahead and installed master battery switches on all our trucks. So when you leave at night, you switch that master switch off, and that cuts the power off to your whole truck, so you don't have to worry about an electrical fire.
“All the new trucks today have master switches on them. All your excavators, machinery have master switches for that reason. But older trucks don’t have them, the one that caught on fire, in particular.”
Ohnmacht says the master switches only cost a few hundred dollars to install. He also recommends contractors who want to avoid a similar situation park their equipment 10 feet apart, to prevent fire jumping between machines.
“We had insurance, and it covered the trucks, and we were able to purchase new trucks,” Ohnmacht says. “But of course, it doesn't pay for the downtime or the two or three weeks of getting new trucks and getting them back on the road.”
The Lucrative Maze of Military Contracts
The majority of 4 Seasons Demolition’s revenue comes from military contracts – where they bring in roughly $8 million to $9 million per year – followed by municipal and county work in North Carolina and South Carolina. Ohnmacht did his first work on a military base in 2000 as a subcontractor, and by 2020, he was landing much larger contracts directly from the government and as a subcontractor.
The specialized work requires much more paperwork, licensing and time than civilian demolition jobs. Ohnmacht jokes he lost all his hair by pulling it out in frustration when he first entered military projects.
“We have to write all kinds of different plans, demolition plans, safety plans, waste management plans, excavation plans and more,” he says. “So, it's time consuming, and it takes a special kind of company to do military work, not just anybody's going to do it. You would need the right licenses, bonding capacity and experience to do the work, then you would have to meet their safety requirements.”
4 Seasons Demolition work done for the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2024.4 Seasons Demolition
But there’s a good reason to invest the time and resources into bidding on military work: It pays well.
“Two and a half million dollars, that's a pretty good chunk for just one job,” Ohnmacht says.
At one point earlier this year, 4 Seasons was working several military contracts at once. They included demolition at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia; Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina; Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina; and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock, North Carolina.
What’s Next for 4 Seasons?
Ohnmacht would like to retire in five years at the age of 60, and he says his son might be lined up to take over the business and bring about its next era of growth, if he wants it. Between now and then, the easiest expansion opportunity, he says, would be opening satellite offices farther from Wilmington and adding employees. But he says more money isn’t the goal and never was.
“If I want to do more work, I'll have to hire more employees and have to do a satellite office,” he says. “And that’s what I have considered, but it’s more stress. I'm happy where I'm at. I'm happy with the size of the company. Quality of life is most important to me.”
Ohnmacht believes that, to some degree, he pushed himself too hard in his career and doesn't want his son to also "work himself to death."Equipment World
