Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/605412
him for the city of Miamisburg, Ohio, and tasking him with mowing grass and plowing snow on that small trac- tor both at home and around town to earn money for the family. He could drive a truck by the age of 9 and by 11 he had earned his own job with a local cemetery after proving his skills with a backhoe, digging graves and doing regular upkeep. Just let that sink in. An 11-year-old gravedigger. Talk about an unflap- pable guy… The jobs he held as a kid would be hard work for anyone. But he enjoyed working with his hands and, despite being bright, grew restless at school, ready for a future working with heavy equipment. He started attending a joint vocational school during high school, pursuing certifi- cation in diesel mechanics. "I figured, I want to operate equipment, but in the winter it kind of sucks because the work slows down," he explains. "But if I'm a mechanic too, I can ser- vice everything and that should keep me busy." See? Smart. As part of his vocational school re- quirements, Humerick job shadowed Everett Cox, the owner of a service station maintenance business. There, he learned about electrical work and plumbing of underground tank systems and was hired to rebuild gas pumps. Now in his senior year, he was enamored by the work and im- mediately wanted to quit school. Because of his 4.0 GPA, his parents and the local high school under- standably pushed him to not drop out. But Humerick would only agree to stay enrolled if the school ad- justed his schedule to let him leave at 10 a.m. every morning, giving him enough time to work a full day at Cox's company. Soon after, Humerick was sent to Columbus to become a certified Petro-Tite tank tester. He says he was by far the youngest person in the world be certified to test this hydrostatic testing system. That led to a few years in Indiana where he worked with both ATEC testing tanks and later with Hoosier Equipment installing tanks. In 1989, he got a phone call from Cox who asked if he would help him start an environmental construc- tion company. Cox would contribute the money, but Humerick would be in charge, with the work mostly consisting of hauling petroleum- contaminated soil away from various sites and pulling tanks with a little bit of underground drilling. EC Environmental lasted only as long as Humerick's tenure. After five years, he felt it was finally time to strike out on his own at the age of 24. When Humerick told Cox the news, he told him, "If you're leaving, I'm shutting it down," Humerick says. On September 23, 1994, Humerick Environmental was established in Mi- amisburg with the help of a $60,000 loan. The company started out per- forming the type of environmental work Humerick had been doing his whole career up to that point. For the first six months, he even did all the drilling by himself, not wanting to hire someone because he was just starting out, and using a Mobile B61 he rented from Cox for three months when he left ECE. Over the next 13 years, Humer- ick's business would transform from an environmental firm to a site development, excavation and util- ity contractor that now does some environmental work, along with a bit of demolition. In that time, Nashville firm Bacar Constructors began using Humerick Environmental as a sub- contractor on various jobs in Ohio. After establishing a great relation- ship with Bacar, his contacts there suggested he move his operation to Nashville, where they were confident he would be one of the top contrac- tors in the area. "I had everything set up in Ohio. Everything was how I liked it," he re- calls. "But I figured that over the next 25 years they were going to build a lot more stuff in Nashville than they are between Dayton and Cincinnati." So in August 2007, after a lot of thought and a lot of prayer, Humerick took the leap, uprooting his family and business from his hometown and moving it all to Nashville. And thanks to the Bacar relationship, the compa- ny didn't show up looking for work. They immediately went to work on Laurel Cove, a massive home de- velopment in College Grove with a country club and Jack Nicklaus-de- signed golf course at the center. "When we showed up down here we were outsiders to the Cat dealer here, to the county, to everyone. We were Yankees from the North. December 2015 | EquipmentWorld.com 76 contractor of the year | continued Humerick, left, talks with John Grider, his foreman, as work continues at Falls Grove.