Leland native Eric Shawbitz has always been in love with playing dirty, gathering rocks, and even climbing trees.
“I got into that because it sounded like fun to climb trees ... started that 10 years ago and mind you, that was when I was 34,” he said.
Shawbitz, 44, grew up in Traverse City and graduated from Leland in 1999.
His grandfather used to own a farm where they would pick rocks until the sun goes down.
“They’d always find me out there just kind of picking through them and playing with the rocks and looking at them and finding the characteristics ... (While a child) one of my best friends and I would go rock hunting for my birthday.”
Shawbitz started climbing trees over 12 years ago.
In 2019, when Lake Michigan water levels rose, Shawbitz started getting a lot of phone calls for seawalls.
His first major seawall project started in Cross Village and then business started picking up in his home town, north of Leland.
In terms of seawalls nowadays, Shawbitz has done a huge amount at Stony Point and north of Leland on Lake Leelanau.
“We went through hundreds of tons of rock, an unbelievable amount of rock,” Shawbitz said.
He says that large angular rocks are best when battling with rising water levels.
Since water levels have receded over the past two years, seawall business has left him transitioning, but Shawbitz knows Lake Michigan won’t behave for long and that is when he will be ready for more seawall projects of that kind.
The spring of 2020 brought a rock shortage and that is when Shawbitz bought capable hauling trucks to do it himself.
“My one buddy showed me a quarry in the Upper Peninsula that was open to harvesting rock and we started pulling big boulders and massive rocks,” he said. “I was one of those kids that always had pockets full of rocks in school and I’d come home and rocks are everywhere.”
From there on, Shawbitz started getting in rock distribution and selling stone as another revenue source.
After jumping around from quarry-to-quarry over the past few years, Shawbitz has found a quarry where he expects to harvest 10-foot boulders with a machine that can dig over 50-feet into the bedrock. Along with rocks for seawall, retaining walls, and gardening walls, Shawbitz also prides himself in finding quality monument stones that are place in driveways of customers.
“I like working with rocks and selling rocks and people are just amazed,” Shawbitz said. “It’s just something I’ve done my whole life and I love doing it. I can’t wait to get up there to work ... I’m probably going up next weekend and I’ve put a camper up there ... everything to live basically.”
Shawbitz goes up to the Upper Peninsula nearly every weekend when weather permits to spend the whole weekend digging rocks and piling them up and then bring it home.
He brings back masonry stone and does his magic.
There’s no rock deposit in Leelanau, at least of Shawbitz interest, even if there were, land prices would be too high to source them.
He also does septic systems. “We do pretty much everything outdoors. Dig foundations, you name it,” Shawbitz said. “(Customers) love the quality of rock that I bring in.”
Shawbitz continued saying to watch for “mechanical harvested” rocks that is run through screens and tumblers to clear off the dirt, but also makes a weaker rock.
“They get gouged up way more ... We hand harvest our masonry,” Shawbitz said. “It’s just been a passion and so I’m trying to make it my full-time job selling just rock.”
