15-Year-Old Rakes in $49,000 With His Lawn-Mowing Business : Jobs: Atlanta teen started when he was 10 and now has two adult employees. Crew mows while he is in school.

David Eilers rakes in the green by mowing it. It’s no summer job for this 15-year-old. He says his lawn-mowing service brought in $49,000 last year.

He was only 9 when he asked his father to let him start the lawn service.

Six years and a riding mower later, the shy teen-ager with a bent for the mechanical has two adult employees.

“It’s a good moneymaker,” David said Tuesday after his freshman business class at Lassiter High School in suburban Marietta. “There’s just going to be unlimited things I can do.”

Most of those will have to wait, however, “until I get bigger or until I get my driver’s license.”

David’s Mowing Service was built with a $2,500 riding mower, a slogan penned by his brother and word-of-mouth marketing that has attracted nearly 50 regular customers who pay an average of $60 per lawn.

The boy’s company has assets of $21,500 and liabilities of $12,110. David has been recognized by a local business group as Youth Entrepreneur of the Year.

“Isn’t he just an inspiration? Wouldn’t you like to have been 15 and making $49,000?” asked Faye Worthy, a customer of David’s for about two years. He does her lawn every other week for between $35 and $50, depending on the services.

But business success at an early age comes with a few problems, such as the times when workers did not want to take orders from their young boss.

“I had a crew that would never listen to me and they didn’t respect me,” David said. “Over the years, I’ve learned how to do it. I can handle it pretty well now.”

“That was a real problem, because he was a little kid and they were big, grown-up high school kids and college kids,” said David’s father, Dennis Eilers. “He’d come in and say, ‘Dad, they won’t do what I tell ‘em to do.’ I’d tell him to remind them that he was the one paying them.”

David now employs two experienced workers, ages 25 and 30. His crew mows during the week while David is in school. He works 12 hours on Saturdays and sometimes shelves his social life when business calls. He pays himself $7 an hour.

His father said his son showed entrepreneurial tendencies at 9.

“He said: ‘Dad, I want to start a mowing business.’ I looked at him and I said, ‘Oh, Lord,’ ” Eilers said. “I told him he had to be 10 and he had to get good grades. . . . He got better grades and he came back and asked when we could go get a mower. So, I had to keep my end of the deal.”

Eilers and his wife, Gwen, bought their son the mower, with a hitch and a cart for his tools. Another son, Jon, thought up a slogan--”David’s Mowing Service: We Can Cut It”--and put it on a sign attached to the tool cart.

The first year, David earned $142 from eight customers whose lawns he mowed with some help from his father.

By the next year, he had added 10 customers and bought more equipment. Sales rose to $16,000, then to $36,000 in 1989.

Now, David’s Mowing Service operates with three trucks, a trailer and nine pieces of power equipment that David repairs.