Mellott Contractors & Supply

Owner has been observed running cyclists off local country roads with horn ablaze on numerous occasions. If you value human life, please don’t support this company. The owner is putting husbands, brothers, mothers, sisters, sons, daughters, at risk of life and limb with his behavior. It’s unacceptable, it has been reported to the police, and he continues to do it. Please buy your landscaping suppiles elsewhere.

Oh my goodness. Another low score for a local company…
Aughh. Where to begin? My sweetheart, the right Reverend Robin R., called around to find a contractor that would deliver enough rock to line our culvert (for a reasonable price). She did *not* go with the lowest bidder. (She’s WAY too environmentally sensitive to do that). She went with the company that would leave the smallest carbon footprint, Mellott Contractors of Carrboro, NC. So what if it would cost $ 20 more than the lowest bidder? The environment is important, and we should all be good stewards… right?
She spoke with Chris. Together, they came to the determination that we’d need «Class B» rip-​rap: rock which is roughly 5 – 12 inches in diameter. She told him we’d need enough rock to cover 600 square feet in the culvert alongside our yard. Please remember that number, 600 square feet.
When the day came, Robin was ready. She’d hired a crew of three men to spread the six tons of rock over the 600 square feet of culvert. I love her attention to detail.
The problem is, the amount of rock delivered wasn’t even CLOSE to what we needed. She protested. They contested. I demur.
After spreading the rock across our ditch, Robin and the crew realized there wasn’t nearly enough rock. Ever the problem solver, Robin had the workers cannibalize enough rock from other sites around our yard to make up some (and I stress, SOME, of the deficit.)
They complied. We paid. And the job was left undone, really. (At least, according to what we’d wanted.)
After I got home to a clearly unhappy Robin, we went out and remeasured. (I am, after all, a middle school science teacher, who is always chiding his students about the importance of measuring carefully.) The ditch that we wanted to cover was, in fact, only 525 square feet, not 600. So there should have been a fair amount left over… not the other way around.
So what happened? Why was our rock delivery off by a whopping 15%? (If you compare the square footage we needed with what we asked for — 525 vs. 600, which turned out to be not nearly enough, we came out with an ‘underage’ of 15%) Robin called Chris, who assured her that their scales were checked WEEKLY by the state. That being said, why the discrepancy? Haven’t the fine folks at Mellott been in business long enough to understand how much Class B rip-​rap is needed to cover 600 square feet? Shouldn’t they be the experts we homeowners defer to? Apparently not.
Chris didn’t want to haggle or discuss the reasons for our obvious shortcomings as mere customers. Let me be clear — another vendor had also stated that six tons would be plenty to cover that area as desired — so again, what happened? Did we REALLY get the six tons we paid for?
Chris told Robin he would sell us more rock, plus delivery charges, but would «withhold» the «fuel adjustment cost.» REALLY?!? He would not inflate the cost beyond the normal price gouging? Personally, I’m appalled.
Robin really wanted the yard done, and opted to go with ordering another two tons. It has since been delivered, and Robin (bless her heart) managed to put it all in place by herself — without having to rehire the muscle to heave it into place. (Her arms are getting really buff!)
The bottom line is, instead of an extra $ 20 to assuage our environmental conscience, we’re out an extra $ 200, AND this job caused twice as much truck exhaust to be spewed into the atmosphere as should have been.
Personally, I’m not pleased. What would you do?

I estimated, with a large margin for error, that I needed to cover 600 square feet of rock to line my culvert. I wanted Class B rip rap which means the rocks are 5 to 12 inches in size. So I called around. I was told my various contractors that I’d need 6 tons. I decided to go with Mellott. They were a little more expensive but only by about $ 20 and I wanted to be green and use someone local. They delivered the rock right on time. No problem. However the rock they delivered didn’t look like it would be enough. I mentioned that to the driver and he told me it was 6 tons and it should be plenty.
Well it wasn’t. Not by lots. I remeasured my area carefully and found I was covering less than 525 square feet. A single layer of the delivered rock didn’t cover even that square footage. We had to pull about 10 wheelbarrow loads of rock from other landscaped areas around my yard hoping to fix the problem. But we couldn’t. It STILL wasn’t enough. Not by lots.
When I called Mellott and talked to Chris, with whom I’d placed the original order, he wanted to make it right, but he wasn’t interested in why the estimated tonnage was off by over 20 percent. He told me that scales are checked weekly by the state. But it begs the question — If various contractors say 6 tons is enough and it wasn’t by over 20 percent, and the scales are accurate, Did I really get 6 tons?
I arranged to get 2 more tons paying for the rock (a price with delivery charge embedded in it) but not the extra $ 50 fuel adjustment cost. However the true cost to me is more than an additional $ 100 when you include the labor of rearranging rock to cover properly and returning rock to ‘borrowed’ yard locations. Also with more tonnage, the Mellott Contractor price is now much more than other contractors because of the way they load the delivery fee into the per ton price.
I appreciate Mellott working with me but still have no way to know if I really got 6 tons. Frankly I won’t use them again. What if they underestimate my next project by 20 percent? It’s just too much to risk.