Tom Everett Connects Castle Teams with the Tools They Need
Pumps, jacks, road plates and other small tools are the domain of Tom Everett.
As logistics manager, he oversees shop inventory at the Castle warehouse to ensure that project teams have access to the resources they need. “Negotiating with outside vendors and being able to control costs is my favorite part of the job,” he says.
Everett began his Castle career in 2017 as logistics manager for heavy equipment. As Castle’s project workload increased, the company brought in Matt Mudd as logistics manager for heavy equipment, and Everett began focusing exclusively on small tools. His purview includes all power tools and a growing array of technology-enabled resources such as pipe lasers, grade lasers and GPS equipment.
The Challenges of Small Tool Inventory Management
Recent supply chain issues and cost increases have thrown a bit of a monkey wrench in Everett’s day-to-day work. “Managing resources has gotten a little bit tricky, especially on the technology side. Anything with a computer chip was back ordered last year, and we’re still playing catch up from that,” he says.
Everett first connected with Castle while working as a laborer on the construction of the Missouri Military Memorial at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, a project on which Castle donated sitework services.
At the time, Everett was completing his accounting degree at Maryville University, and he was only interested in changing jobs if he could broaden his experience and leverage his accounting skills. “After a couple of interviews, Castle found a spot that was well suited for me,” he says, “and I've been here ever since.”
The Road to a Heavy Civil Construction Career
Before embarking on a construction career, Everett wanted to start a landscaping company and greenhouse. From age 8 through high school, he helped tend a three-acre garden in the backyard of his grandparents’ home, located across from Wabash Park in Ferguson. The garden produced as many as 4,500 tomato plants and twice as much corn in a single year.
“We sold tomatoes at a roadside stand in front of the house and also sold to two restaurants,” says Everett, noting that the family donated extra vegetables to an orphanage in Normandy.
Motivated to launch his own business, he completed the horticulture program at North County Technical High School, but realized the startup funds and land that would be required to start a landscape company made that goal impractical.
Instead, he dabbled in residential construction work before securing a job driving coal trains for Union Pacific Railroad at the Labadie power plant. “I enjoyed it, but got burnt out working three shifts in two days, so I decided to join the Marine Corps,” he says.
Serving His Country Overseas
Everett enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2003 and was stationed in an infantry unit stationed at Camp Horno, inside Camp Pendleton. During a deployment to Iraq in 2004, he sustained neck and shoulder injuries from a roadside bomb and earned a Purple Heart medal. He recovered from these injuries quickly and finished the deployment with his unit. But after returning to the U.S., follow-up medical evaluation confirmed his physical injuries were worse than originally assumed, and he received an honorable discharge under medical circumstances.
After his four-year service commitment ended, Everett got married and moved back to St. Louis. Union Pacific offered him a job driving trains, but it would’ve required him to spend nearly 100% of his time on the road. “I was newly married, and my wife was pregnant, so I passed on that one and worked on my own doing residential construction jobs,” he says.
From 2007 to 2013, he worked for the Street Division of O’Fallon, Mo. completing road repairs, then joined the labor union and shifted to structural concrete and flat work on commercial construction projects.
Since signing on with Castle, Everett hasn’t looked back. “We have a lot of talent at Castle, and everyone is very personable and easy to get along with,” he says.
Everett lives in O’Fallon with his wife and four children, who range in age from 10 to 15. All of his kids are sports enthusiasts, and Everett is an assistant coach on his youngest son's flag football team. “We spend most of our weekends either at somebody's sporting event or tournament or barbecuing at the house,” he says.
His other hobbies include camping, fishing and participating in long-range shooting competitions.
