Wayne Brooks

Safety Coordinator
Been with B&B since 2005

Wayne Brooks spent ten years banging dents out at a local truck body shop. And for just about that long, Dennis McCartney had been razzing him about coming to work at a real job. “When you get tired of that tin-knocking work,” Dennis would joke, “Come see us.”

Wayne finally did just that. He may not have known much about welding, but he knew the McCartneys. He played on the championship Patapsco High School soccer team with Brendan McCartney. Watching Wayne excel on the soccer field, Dennis and Peggy knew him to be a natural competitor. And they always knew he’d bring that same work ethic to the shop.

Which is precisely what he’s done.

“I remember the first day I came to work here,” says Wayne. “ I sat in the lunch room and didn’t know what to expect. I felt lost, but a good lost.”

Quickly, Wayne learned the finer points of welding. Wanting his chance on the big machines, he channeled his competitive drive into learning the CNC equipment. He took college classes in computer science and drew heavily on his earlier mastery of college calculus 3. Soon, he’d go toe to toe with the angle master and the beam line. Today, he’s B&B’s “Master of the Pipe Bender.” Fabricating handrails has become his specialty. These days, you might also find him tackling the plate machine.

Looking back, he’s happy to have made his transformation from knocking tin to welding steel. He is, as we say around here, “a worker.” And that’s the greatest compliment you can earn at B&B.

“It’s nice to work for an employee-owned company,” says Wayne. “Because really, you’re working for yourself — for your own future.”

For all his success in our shop, Wayne harbors one great flaw: he prefers softball to fishing (Hey, what do you expect from a guy who played college baseball?). But like with everything else he does here at B&B, Wayne steps up to the plate. “I always go out on the fishing trips,” he says. “I get my line wet.”

updated 2009