Trusted Dealer:Tom Anton

The rust belt winds its way from New York State, down to West Virginia and then carves a jagged scar across the Midwest to southern Wisconsin. The iron, coke and steel mined here shaped our city skylines, our auto industry and the weather-worn personalities and hard-earned values that make up this great country.

It shaped folks like Tom Anton’s father.

Like thousands of others before him, Anton grew up along the Monongahela River in Clairton, Pennsylvania while his pop was cutting his teeth in one of the local mills. Clairton isn’t an easy town, and you can feel its history in Anton’s voice. Cracked. Rough. Powerful and firm.

You don’t build things in Clairton. You make and mine the things that are used for building other things here – and that’s it. There’s no celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit. Here, beneath all that grit and grime, the collars are blue.

So in 1985 it had to come as a bit of a surprise to the good citizens of Clairton when Tom Anton’s father hung his own shingle on Gill Hall Road and named his company Jefferson Hills. 

The place started small but grew at a steady pace. 30 years later they’re going strong, and so is Anton’s father.

“It was my Dad’s business,” says Anton “he’s still here every day.”

There’s not much to do in Clairton – when you’re not working, you make your own fun. Tom Anton races cars. Four cylinder compacts on asphalt oval track. In 2015 he took rookie of the year in a 1999 Chevy Cavalier (#64). He’s almost completed construction on a car for his son who will start racing soon.

“I wanna try to get some victories under his belt this year,” Anton huffs. This mentality is obviously part of a family legacy – an appreciation for hard work and hard working gear. It makes sense then that Jefferson Hills sells and services Shindaiwa.

“Almost all of our sales at Jefferson Hills are Shindaiwa,” he says “it’s because they’ve always built a good, solid trimmer.”

He’s put so much stock in the craftsmanship that he’s dedicated 25 feet of show floor to the Shindaiwa brand.

“They’ve got power and they work great. Ninety-five percent of the people buying this stuff are pros so the power to weight ratio is phenomenal. ”

And in a small town like Clairton, that kind of reliability – that kind of trust – is everything.