May 13, 2010

By Rick Winterson

Tom Miller is another South Boston entrepreneur.  He started up South Boston Cleanouts & Demo nearly two years ago.  His growing firm provides disposal services of all kinds, residential and commercial, to South Boston and the surrounding towns.

Tom Miller is the founder and owner of South Boston Cleanouts & Demo, which is the abbreviation for “demolition”, of course.  He’s a born-and-brought-up South Boston resident, who has lived in several of the local neighborhoods.  His parents were Priscilla (McCarthy) and Paul Miller.  He’s the youngest of 10 children, and went to the Gavin and South Boston High.

Tom spent several years with the City of Boston, working in the Transportation Department and the Inspectional Services Department (ISD), where he was a Housing Inspector.  Nowadays, you can also find him on occasional evenings tending bar at Touchie’s Shamrock Pub. 

But he has always wanted to work for himself.  About two years ago, Tom joined the ranks of South Boston’s entrepreneurs by becoming an independent businessman.  He started a disposal services operation, which he now calls “South Boston Cleanouts & Demo”.

South Boston Cleanouts & Demo’s services can be summarized by reading Tom’s advertisement – Demo/Gut-outs, Yards, Basements, Resident & Commercial.  Depending on the size and manpower requirements for any given job, his turnaround time is quick.  Same-day service is definitely possible for him; he advertises 24-Hour Emergency Services if needed.  And no local job is too small – disposal of yard waste or of a single appliance is well within his capabilities.

Tom seems to be doing something right, because his business has grown.  He now operates two stake-body trucks on a full time basis.  His crews can be rapidly expanded from the core of a few people he regularly employs (his son Colby is one of them), up to 12 for two weeks or more on some of the largest jobs he has handled. 

Tom’s business is about evenly split between residential projects – both single and multi-family – and commercial jobs.  He has provided disposal services to a long list of some of South Boston’s most well known establishments and developers.  With the good weather at hand and the economy reviving, he has positioned South Boston Cleanouts & Demo to take on additional business over the summer months, so feel free to call him.  In fact, three customer calls came in during this interview.  They were all handled on the spot within a 24-hour time frame.

The disposal services business has some interesting community aspects.  Tom has picked up numerous working appliances and “lightly used” furniture suites, and then delivered them to people who need them.  Requests for this informal recycling come from people like Dodo Nee, who are engaged in helping others whenever they can.  Tom is willing provide advice on how to accomplish as much “green” disposal as possible on any given job.

And Tom never knows what he’ll find on a demo job.  Naturally, there are the usual skeleton keys and decades-old beer cans, but once he found some 2-1/2 cent U.S. coins from 1856 under floorboards worth about $400 each.  Another time, he came across antique doors worth $2,000 during a bank demo job.

On another job in an abandoned building, he and his crew thought they heard rats.  The “rats” turned out to be a litter of kittens, which the mother cat nursed while everything was being dismantled around her.  One of the kittens was playful and hung out with the workers, so she was named “Demo” and was eventually taken home by one of them.  The others were adopted by neighbors.

In his spare time, Tom supports several local programs and purchases tickets to many worthwhile Southie “times”.  He also patronizes yard sales as a hobby, and now takes great pride in Maddis, his newborn granddaughter.

The contact information for South Boston Cleanouts & Demo is (617)407-4241 or southbostoncleanouts@yahoo.com