A Sioux City business is celebrating its 150 year anniversary. L.G. Everist says his great grandfather Luicius Garland Everist started L.G. Everist incorporated.
“He was selling coal, came to Sioux City, was in the retail coal business, and that evolved into construction and road paving and construction materials and mining, and we’ve continued to evolve from there,” he says. The fifth generation family company has around 500 employees with operations in the midwest, Colorado and California.
Everist says while technology continues to evolve, the basic things they do have stayed the same. “At the end of the day, construction materials are a basic necessity. All the roads, sidewalks, parking lots, all the construction that goes on needs basic materials. And we don’t think that business will go away,” Everist says.
Iowa Economic Development director Debi Durham was the keynote speaker at Monday’s celebration. “One hundred 50 years is significant. I think the thing that’s so remarkable about this story is it’s that true story of resilience, right?” Durham says. “About how they started and how they had to pivot along the way through the industrial revolution and where we are today. And quite frankly, I can’t wait to see where they take this company tomorrow.”
Everist says the company is playing a part in the FIFA soccer tournament that’s underway. “In Colorado specifically, we’re tied in with a landscape company that has provided all the sand for the FIFA fields. And they’ve got a standard spec that they’ve demanded that comes out of our pit in Colorado,” he says. Everist says they are supplying 400 tons of sand as a base for each for six stadiums in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
