When he was just six years old, Tyler Schiele was already captivated by the hum of lawnmowers and the beautiful symmetry of neatly striped grass.

“I always had a fascination for the zero-turn mowers,” Schiele said. “I’d sit by the window at home just watching landscapers work.”

By age 10, he was cutting lawns in his neighborhood and lending a hand to a neighbor’s landscaping crew. During the pandemic, when he was just a freshman in high school at Archbishop Carroll, he began working full time.

“When school went online, our assignments were due by midnight,” Schiele said. “I’d wake up at 4:30 or 5 AM, finish my work by 7 AM, and be out cutting grass all day. It kind of changed my life.”

The unexpected flexibility of remote learning during his high school years enabled Schiele to balance his coursework with a growing client list and thus lay the foundation for what is now a thriving business, Conshohocken-based TNS Landscaping & Hardscaping.

“At first, it was just me and a mower,” said Schiele, who’s now 22 years old. “When I was 16, I had 150 lawns and that quickly grew to 350. Now, I’ve got three full-time employees and another six or seven seasonal guys.”

As TNS grew, Schiele opened a business banking account with Firstrust Bank, the family-owned bank long known for supporting local entrepreneurs.

“I started with Firstrust as just a depositor,” he said. “Then, one of the guys there mentioned Apex Commercial Capital and said, ‘If you ever need equipment, give me a call.’”

Horsham-based Apex, a subsidiary of Firstrust Bank, works with equipment suppliers and commercial businesses to provide an easy and efficient financing process. At first, Schiele hesitated.

“I was always a big cash guy,” he said. “My grandmother does the books for me, and she told me, ‘You need to start building business credit instead of buying everything in cash.’ I didn’t really get it at the time, but she was right. So, I called Firstrust, and they connected me with Patrick Hasher (a Commercial Account Executive at Apex).”

That call proved pivotal. Through Apex, Schiele was able to secure his first financed purchase: a 60-inch Vertex X Series mower.

“They got me everything I needed, fast,” he said. “Later that year, when we picked up snow contracts, they helped me finance an ATV with a plow. And this year, when we had multiple mowers down at once, they made sure we got what we needed to keep going.”

In the landscaping industry, reliable equipment is everything. Downtime costs money, and purchasing gear outright can tie up precious cash flow. That’s where Apex’s flexibility proved invaluable.

“The process with Apex is unbelievably easy,” Schiele said. “One time, I needed a piece of equipment on short notice. I told them I needed it yesterday, and the next day, we were picking it up.”

Learn more about Apex Commercial Capital and how its financing programs are competitive, easy to implement, and built to fit the changing needs of businesses.

This article originally appeared on Montco.today on November 11, 2025, and was written by Mark Hostutler. Click here to see the original article.