Continuing a business legacy in Upper Township
SEAVILLE — Tom Tower saw the potential of what could be when he came to Upper Township in 1984 and started Action Supply at the quarry off Stagecoach Road. What his son saw was his father’s incredible work ethic, watching him grow Action Supply into multiple businesses helping homeowners to major contractors.
“He scratched and clawed and fought for his dream and his dream was the ready-mixed concrete business,” said Tim Tower, now Action Supply’s CEO.
He explained that his father and grandfather had been working in landscaping where they lived in Long Island, but Tom Tower found a mentor who taught him about the concrete trade before he found an opportunity in South Jersey.
When he arrived in Upper Township nearly 41 years ago, a stranger from New York getting into the concrete business, Tom Tower was viewed with some suspicion, but over the years built a good reputation in the community.
Not that it came easy. He worked constantly.
When he started the company, he began with one concrete mixer truck and would travel wherever he could find more trucks.
“That’s how hard it was in the beginning. We went from one truck to two trucks to four trucks,” Tim said. “They’d buy used trucks. They’d find a bunch of trucks in Florida in an ad in the newspaper, go down to see them, make a deal and drive them up I-95. Sometimes they wouldn’t even paint them, just put them on the road. That’s how he built the business.”
Action Supply and its related businesses — Atlantic Masonry, Advantage Rentals, Ace Hardware, a commercial real estate and property management side, not to mention a small building company — now employ some 150 people.
Tim, a 2001 Ocean City High School graduate, grew up watching his parents, Tom and Debra, before embarking on his own career at Action Supply.
“I remember all the struggles. You’re at the dinner table and your parents are talking about the business,” Tim said. Some of that talk revolved around union activity. “The union tried to take them down three times,” he said.
Tom fought off attempts to turn the business into a union shop, vowing he’d shut the gates and close Action Supply before letting unions take over. He wanted the flexibility of being a family business.
Union rules, Tim explained, would prevent a concrete mixer driver from hopping into a dump truck on a slow day when there’s no concrete to be poured or a dump truck driver going over to help clean up the shop with the mechanics if there was no other work to do.
“There are a lot of benefits of being a family-based company and treating people right, treating your employees with respect,” Tim said. He noted a majority of Action Supply’s employees have more than 10 years with the company and some as many as 35.
Tim knew how busy has dad was with the business and why he couldn’t watch many of his soccer games, but he was there for the big games when Tim played on two state championship soccer teams at OCHS in the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 school years. (Tim became an assistant coach with the boys soccer team when former teammate and lifelong friend Aaron “Bogy” Bogushefsky asked him for help in 2010 and then stayed with him since then.)
Tim played soccer for two years in college but knee injuries and homesickness got the better of him and he returned to Upper Township.
He worked his way up through the company before becoming the CEO. With 21 years at Action Supply, Tim started as a laborer, moved up to driver, concrete pump operator, batch guy and general manager before his current role.
Tim got into management around 2016. Tom Tower died Nov. 1, 2020. His wife, Debra Tower, is the owner of Action Supply and its related companies. She and Tim comprise the management team.
(As an aside, according to Tim, Debra and Tom turned out to be a good fit for each other after they were set up by her uncle for their first unplanned date at a hot dog stand in New York. Tom was already a hard-working man trying to make money by watering plants in high-rise buildings and Debra would go with him. That would be their date, with maybe a bite to eat or a Knicks game afterward. She appreciated his hard work; he appreciated her.)
Action Supply’s business
“My dad always wanted to be like a one-stop shop, from when you start your project to when you finish it. ‘Call for action’ is what he used to say,” Tim said. Some of the reasons behind the name Action Supply stemmed from when a Rolodex was king of contacts, long before cell phones.
The first card you flipped to was “A,” Tim said. “‘A’ would come first in the phone book. When people go to pay their bills, my dad would say, maybe they’ll start alphabetically,” he said, smiling.
Action Supply offers ready-mix concrete for little to big jobs, from sidewalks, driveways and basements to large commercial buildings. It supplies “aggregate” for construction including crush stone, sand, gravel and recycled concrete.
Action Supply provides concrete block, cement block and foundation block and offers interlocking pavers for driveways, decks, patios and larger projects. It has the largest display of pavers in the county and people can go there to look at the type of aggregate they may want for their projects as well.
There are two concrete plants at the Seaville location and a Class B recycling facility across Stagecoach Road that takes in broken concrete — the type from pulling up old driveways, sidewalks and footing — and crushes it into a product to be used as a base.
Tim explained how a typical job begins.
“We make a product called ready-mixed concrete. A contractor or a homeowner will call us, we’ll batch it in a truck and bring it,” he said. The first step could be pouring the foundation for a customer, who may then come back and buy block from Action Supply for the foundation walls. The company could then get called back to pour a driveway or sidewalk, and provide pavers.
“The big thing is the customer service part,” Tim said. “We never want to take our customers for granted. We have so many different customers. It’s great because you get to see them come into the yard to buy supplies or when I’m doing quality control and it’s a big job, I’ll be out to see the customers.”
“I like the position I’m in. I get to interact with a lot of different people — suppliers, employees, customers. There are a lot of people who were hired when my dad was alive. They know the standards and we have all these processes in place that are tried and true and proven.”
Tim said his father “wanted to be there to supply the customers with everything they needed from start to finish for the most part.” He noted the elder Tower “was a really good, down-to-Earth guy.” He was an Eagle Scout and “he proved himself in the community” by quietly supporting causes and projects, including Eagle Scout and other scouting projects.
“He did good stuff for the community because it was the right thing to do,” Tower said. “In honor of my dad, we continue to do that too.”
He noted some of the best things he hears are people coming up to tell him about the good deeds his father did and how he treated other people.
“My dad taught me the right way,” he said, including getting his commercial driver’s license, driving a concrete mixer and a dump truck, operating heavy equipment. “He wanted me to know the value of a dollar. He wanted me to learn and work hard. I always took that very seriously.
“It was a point of pride for me. I never wanted to be looked at as the owner’s son. I wanted you to like me or not for my work ethic, not my last name.”
Coming up through the ranks, from manual laborer to driving trucks, helped him ensure that the people who work for Action Supply have the right equipment and a nice place to work. He and his mother know their employees; they don’t treat them like numbers.
Tim said everyone was shook up when his father died because Tom Tower was the patriarch, the one who kept the family together and the business running, but Tim learned from the best.
“He was the hardest-working person I’ve ever been around and the most relentless,” Tim said of his dad, whose lessons he learned and now puts into practice.
“I know he’s proud of us. I don’t want people to forget him.”
Learn more at actionsupplynj.com or by calling (609) 390-0663.
Story by DAVID NAHAN The Upper Township Sentinel
