Cherokee Nation citizen, Seven Feathers award winner expands his business

TAHLEQUAH ­– Across the road from the Cherokee Nation Tribal Complex is where Fourkiller Lawn Solutions’ latest expansion, FLS Concrete, produced the concrete to give the CN Department of Transportation a new parking lot. 

This is one of the first “big jobs” FLS Concrete has done, Cherokee Nation citizen and Seven Feathers award-winning business owner, Tyler Fourkiller, said. 

Fourkiller Lawn Solutions started as a summer job for then-high school student Tyler Fourkiller. Now, that business has boomed into one of the top Native-owned businesses in the area.

FLS Concrete’s service varies from selling the concrete to forming and finishing as well.

“We’ve got these volumetric concrete trucks to where we can mix our own concrete.” Fourkiller said. “So, we have foreman and finishing crews, but we also just sell concrete as well”

The transaction from landscaping and irrigation to concrete isn’t random. In fact, it was his father Brandon Fourkiller who inspired and encouraged Tyler to start working with concrete.

“You probably don’t really think of concrete and landscaping really tying together. I got started with the landscape and irrigation, and we built a good team behind it.” Fourkiller said. “I grew up watching him (his father) going to job sites – he’s done concrete all his life. We got together a year or so back and started doing our own forming and finishing …. (I’ve been) learning from my dad, learning while being on site. I’ve also got a really good friend too that helped me get these trucks going. Just being able to talk to the right people and them being able to help me and stuff like man, it sure means a lot.”

Some of the other projects FLS Concrete has been a part of, according to Fourkiller, have been the Cherokee Nation housing in Adair, Sequoyah, Cherokee, Mayes, Delaware and Rogers counties and the walking trail at CN Three Rivers Health Center. On the landscaping side, Fourkiller Lawn Solutions has worked on the Salina Healthcare Center, the Durbin Feeling Language Center and the arts pathway in downtown Tahlequah, to name a few.

Both Fourkiller Lawn Solutions and FLS Concrete combine to have around 25 employees, an estimated 80 percent of them Cherokee, Fourkiller said.

While the landscaping side of his business has won awards, Fourkiller hopes that FLS Concrete will have similar success. 

“That was awesome to receive that.” Fourkiller said, about receiving his Seven Feathers Award and the TERO Small Business of the year award. “We work hard every day, and it’s really cool to get a plaque and a trophy and stuff like that. It’s pretty rewarding. Hopefully, one day we can do the same thing on the concrete side here.”