Years ago, Tom Mahoney impressed his young daughter, Sammi, by lifting a fiberglass bathtub over his head in the family garage. “She loved when I did that,” he says. “Of course, the tub weighed nothing.” That memory still lives to this day on the side of Mahoney’s plumbing trucks. The 47-year-old owner of Little Tommy’s Plumbing Shop in the Chicago North Shore suburb of Highwood is shown in caricature form pressing that bathtub over his head.
“People stop and look at the logo all the time,” Mahoney says. “My technicians tell me people come over and take pictures next to it. Even the guy who stripes the vans (Jim Brando of Gurnee, Ill.-based Brando Graphic Arts) gets calls about it.” While the logo draws plenty of attention, so does the company name. “It’s a play on words,” Mahoney explains. “I’m 6 ft., 3 in. tall and 280 pounds. I’m not little. When someone comes to the door and sees me, they say they’d hate to see what Big Tommy looks like. The name is something people won’t forget.” Mahoney, who pays tribute to his Irish heritage in several places on his vans, started Little Tommy’s in 2009 after 20 years in his family’s Highwood-based plumbing business. “I wanted to control my own destiny,” he says.