Penhall Company

Chris Mueller has been with Penhall Company only a year, yet as a former Marine Sergeant, at 28 not only is Chris well known in the company he is already on his way to a promotion to Fleet Manager.

Chris’s journey to Penhall Company has been fascinating.

Chris joined the Marine Corps in September 2005, at the age of 18. While working at the Pacific Honda Dealership he decided to accompany his friend, who wanted to become a military firefighter, to meet the recruiter. The photos of camouflage paint, military equipment and uniform intrigued Chris, and so he enlisted. The Corps provided a sense of structure and assertiveness. He learned to be an individual and became much more self-reliant, which came into play later on when entering the Concrete Cutting Industry.

After boot camp, MCT (Military Combat Training), MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), and ending up stationed 20 minutes from his house, Chris spent 7 months in Iraq.

Now days, it’s almost unheard of for people to stay with a company for a decade.

But Clark Thompson, Division Manager for Birmingham, AL, Montgomery, AL, Huntsville, AL and Biloxi, MS, has been with Penhall for over 25 years. What’s more is that he’s been in the concrete cutting business for 29 years.

And how times have changed.

In 1985, when Clark was just out of high school, his small hometown in West Virginia didn’t provide much in the way of work. So he and his friend (now brother-in-law) decided to head south to find more lucrative jobs.

While Florida was their destination, they discovered ample work opportunity during their stopover in Atlanta, GA. On the advice of some helpful gentlemen they met while eating breakfast at their hotel, Clark and his brother-in-law went to the outskirts of Atlanta, found a local newspaper, responded to an ad for concrete cutting, and were interviewed later that day.

The very next day they started work.

Training for concrete cutting work was drastically different back then. Their training consisted of learning how to load and unload the saw on the back of a truck and practicing cutting a 50-foot chalked line in a concrete parking lot. The thought process was that, if you could cut a straight line within a few hours, you were an operator.

One of the most daunting aspects of the new job was driving a huge one-ton truck on Interstate 285. Being from a very small town in West Virginia, Clark was relatively unfamiliar with such a heavily travelled highway and it took a few months of driving on them until he felt confident.

The strong work-ethic that was ingrained in Clark and his brother-in-law was quickly recognized by their boss. He encouraged them to reach out to their friends back in WV to see if anyone was interested in heading south to work. A few did, and for about a year there were five of them working over 100 hours a week and living together in an apartment.

In 1989, his brother-in-law started his own concrete cutting company called Metro Concrete Cutting. The company started with one flat saw truck and eventually grew to eight diamond trucks. Clark also established Metro Loading and Hauling to serve as the demolition side of Metro Concrete Cutting.

To grow their business and ensure that they were readily available to meet customers’ needs, Clark and his brother-in-law purchased the large cell phones available at the time and wired them up to the horn of their truck. Whenever they were out cutting and a phone call came in, the horn would start blowing.

Needless to say, their business grew quickly, as did their reputation for providing reliable, high-quality work.

In the late 1990s, Penhall Company was expanding East. Penhall was impressed with the service offerings and customer base of Metro Concrete Cutting and in 1998 purchased the company, keeping Clark and his brother-in-law on the operations team.

David Pabst has been with Penhall Company for so long that he almost lost track whether it’s 28 or 29 years. Currently a Division Service Manager at Gardena, California, David has had his fair share of on-site experience too.

David entered the company right out of high school. What started out as a summer job resulted in a lifetime career. Although he had his college picked out, but David was enjoying working as a shop runner in Division 14, Gardena. The requirement for the job was to be mechanically inclined and David definitely had a knack for it. As a freshman he bought a car from his uncle for $1.00. The car was useless at that point; it didn’t run at all because the engine was damaged. David fixed it by himself and actually got it to work. So well in fact that it lasted him 5 years. He even drove it to Penhall Company when he started working here.

James Wiltshire has definitely risen through the ranks. Having started out as a laborer 25 years ago, he has held almost every position in the concrete cutting industry from deep core drilling to operations manager. For the last 4 1/2 years James, better known as Jim, has been Penhall Company’s Division Service Manager in Seattle, WA.

Before getting into the concrete cutting industry Jim served in the military for 5 years. He spent 3 years with the 82nd Airborne Division as a paratrooper and 2 years in Korea with the 2ND Infantry Division.

When his service ended Jim returned to Southern California. Jim had some friends in the industry and they helped him secure a position. From there the jobs got bigger and more technically advanced, as did the series of companies he worked for. Eventually Jim decided to join Penhall Company’s Reno branch in 2007 as the Company was pioneering in its approach to the industry. Having spent 20+ years in the concrete cutting industry, he knew the work was difficult and a lot of times risky but seeing a Company take a zero accident approach was something he had to be part of. Jim craved a challenge, and Penhall Company provided more opportunities with its extensive availability of assets and large-scale projects.