Hard at Work in Homer
Quality Asphalt paves its way to prosperity
When Albert Einstein coined the phrase, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity,” he was likely motivated by someone just like Kent Tackett and his sons.
Tackett founded Quality Asphalt Paving, Inc. in 1994 in Homer, Mich., largely because he needed a job.
He was 36 years old and a Coca-Cola Company sales manager in Florida when he received an unexpected call from his mom back in Homer, telling him that his dad was terminally ill. He quit his job, packed up his family and moved home. He recalls, “My employer offered me a job in Fort Wayne, Ind., but that would have required 12-hour days and a long commute. I didn’t want to do that—but I also knew that I couldn’t just sit around. I like to be busy and I had a family to support.
At the time, Tackett and his wife had three children, two sons and a daughter. A friend owned an asphalt business that involved sealcoating and patching driveways and parking lots. He needed some help and offered Tackett a job. Tackett adds, “Turns out, the hard work and the hands-on aspects of the paving operation really appealed to me—and I wanted my own business.”
With just $400 and an unbeatable work ethic, he bought a truck, a sledge hammer and a pick axe and got to work.
Single-Minded Focus
Tackett’s first customer was the owner of a transmission shop in Marshall, who paid him $275 to sealcoat the property.
He says, “I did that job by myself in two days. I never cashed that check; I had it framed and hung it on the wall in my home office.”
It’s likely he would have cashed it if he needed it, but word quickly spread that Tackett was in business. A few days later, a local gas station owner gave him a contract to reseal multiple stations.
He adds, “Those two jobs [at the transmission shop and gas stations] got my company on track. The owners appreciated my work ethic, efficiency and personal attention to detail.”
Soon after, he was sealcoating and paving for commercial, industrial and residential customers throughout Homer and the surrounding communities. Not long after that, he put his two teenage boys, Mike and Kirk, to work.
Tackett says, “I wanted them to learn the business so I had them do every job from cleaning the floor to operating the pavers. I knew that if they wanted to run the business someday, they’d need to know if a grader operator was charging a fair price. Before they were 18, they’d done just about every job in the company.”
Over the years, the company’s project backlog expanded and opportunities grew so much that Tackett was purchasing 75,000 tons of asphalt annually from his supplier. He opened a second office in Goshen, Ind., to meet demand, and bought an asphalt plant in Jonesville, Mich., in 2014.
In the meantime, the boys were growing up and considering careers outside of the asphalt business. Both attended college, Mike to study nutrition and Kirk to study computer science, though they continued to work for their dad’s company. Tackett encouraged them to switch to business degrees so that they could help run and eventually take over the company. They agreed. By 2010, both boys were working full time in the business—Mike as the Lead Sales Estimator and Kirk as the company’s Operations Manager.
In its first two decades of business, Quality Asphalt Paving had grown from a locally run company to an operation that extends across much of central-southern Michigan, including Lansing and northern Indiana, with an annual revenue in excess of $4 million.
“It gives us a sense of pride [to take over the company], along with a great amount of pressure and responsibility to continue on.” Mike Tackett, Lead Sales Estimator, Quality Asphalt Paving
A Homer Heritage
Three years ago, tragedy struck the Tackett family. Tackett’s best friend and beloved wife of 36 years died of cancer. He’d known her since 2nd grade. Admittedly despondent and depressed, he handed the keys to the company to his two sons and moved back to Florida.
Built with the same work ethic as their father, Mike and Kirk struggled to get past the heartbreak of losing their mother, and maintain the business their father had worked so hard to build.
Mike confirms, “For my brother and me, taking over the business has been a valuable learning experience and also a start of a new chapter. We were always told that we would one day take over the company, but when it happened, it was fast and unforeseen at the same time. It gives us a sense of pride, along with a great amount of pressure and responsibility to continue on. We have definitely learned a great deal. We’re ready to keep expanding our clientele, the scope and scale of our projects and our company.”
They’ve done quite well. The company employs around 50 people, depending on the season, in its two offices and plant, and has a fleet consisting of live-bottom trucks of varying sizes, dump trucks, rollers and pavers. Today, annual revenues are in excess of $10 million. The Tacketts and their crew also recently completed their largest project to date, a $1.3 million roadway paving and reconstruction project at the Michigan Army National Guard Fort Custer Training Center in Battle Creek, Mich. And they have big plans for the future, which include more asphalt plants, larger crews and ever more challenging projects.
“We employ most of our family here at our companies and many lifelong friends,” concludes Mike. “A majority of our employees have been with this company since the early years when we first expanded into paving and, a few from those very early days, when all we had was a truck and buckets of sealer. We all take a great deal of pride in what we’ve built.”
Meanwhile, Kent plans to stay in Florida—though he’s definitely not retired. He bought an asphalt company in January this year and is now working 90 hours a week sealing, coating and paving what could essentially be called the southern division of Quality Asphalt Paving.