It was roughly 250 years ago that a peculiar but brilliant Virginian aristocrat sat down at a Philadelphia desk with his quill, ink, and some parchment. He was tasked with justifying a political dispute that was about to get a lot of people killed, but in doing so, he ended up achieving something far greater.

There are a lot of pretty words in that declaration, and the most important pertain to the pursuit of happiness. Essentially, no one has any right to tell you what you can do with your life. You can be whatever you want, and no one can limit your growth. 

That’s powerful stuff, and it’s why the coda stuck in spite of that gentleman’s many personal shortcomings. It speaks to both halves of our collective personality, because in this country we celebrate personal liberation and acquisition.

Jefferson’s words are the gospel for both. Nearly everything in American history lies downstream from them. It’s why the champions of capitalism, emancipation, labor, women’s suffrage, and civil rights all inevitably cite him to convince the masses of their cause’s righteousness.

Think about it. We consistently produce individuals who began with next to nothing and became some of the most successful and influential humans to ever live. Hamilton, Vanderbilt, Douglass, Lincoln, King, X, Whitman, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Twain, Ford, Disney, Davis, Pressley, Springsteen, Winfrey, Jordan, Tyson, Stallone, Jobs, Bezos. 

Their stories were simply not possible anywhere else, and this country immortalizes its winners. But it can devour the losers. For every Musk, there are a thousand others you’ve never heard of who bet it all and found bankruptcy, broken families, abandoned dreams, and quiet defeat.

The pursuit is guaranteed but the outcome is not. It often comes with extraordinary risk and demands tremendous sacrifice. Few industries make the wager more tangible than construction. Firms are often founded with personal savings and loans backed by homes. Before the first invoice is ever paid, payroll, equipment, insurance, fuel, rent, permits, and materials must be financed. One bad estimate can erase months of profit while expenses pile relentlessly. It’s a wonder anyone attempts it at all.

But this is America, baby. That is the dream, it is totally irrepressible, and anyone who follows western Pennsylvania construction knows that building a dynasty is more than possible. Our region is filled with them and many trace their origins trace back to a young couple dreaming bigger than they had any right to. Few had formal business training, some could barely speak English. But all shared the same pursuit: building a life with their hands.

Tom and Angie Eger are one of the latest Western Pennsylvanian couples to attempt this. They’ve been chasing their dream for over five years now, and it’s rarely been easy. In fact, at some points it’s been downright scary. But the pair have survived their initial trial by fire and are preparing for expansion.

This is their story. 

The two met in 2010, on Facebook of all places. Angie was 19. Tom was 20. You remember how it was back then. Like a few beach pics, slide into the DM’s, and four years later you’re moving into a home together.

The house was in Imperial, and Tom built it with his own hands. He grew up in the business. His father was a union carpenter who ran a side hustle installing windows and roofing, and Tom was working alongside him at age 10.

Angie started in human resources. Over the next decade, she advanced rapidly through increasingly senior leadership roles, overseeing recruiting, employee relations, safety, compliance, and organizational strategy.

She’s outgoing. Social. Bubbly. Easy to engage with and understands strategic networking and growth. Tom’ a little more taciturn. He usually only says exactly what he thinks and isn’t overly concerned if you agree.

These two are as Pittsburgh as a pair of pickles, and they got hitched in 2017. Like many newlyweds, they began to wonder what came next. A child would be nice. But after a few years, they began to wonder if that was in the cards. 

If it wasn’t, perhaps happiness might need to come from elsewhere.

At that point, Tom had over a decade in at the Carpenters Union. While he liked most of the crews and companies, he was a superintendent whose skillset had evolved to such a degree that work could feel akin to babysitting, and he began having dangerous thoughts about setting out on his own.

Meanwhile, Angie had begun to quietly wonder if the corporate ladder actually went anywhere. A new office. A new title. The same basic function. We’ve all been there.

So, they began to gameplan it out. What it would require. How they would pay for it. The sacrifice it would require from each. In 2022, talk became action. Days were spent at their real jobs. Nights were for prospecting, bidding small projects, cold calling every GC asking for a chance to prove themselves.

“Every night after work we’d sit down on our laptops,” recalled Angie. “And I would email every single general contractor on the union list looking for leads. We’d stay up past midnight, then get up to go to work.”

In 2023, they went all in. The pair took out a small business loan and founded TRE Construction. Angie stayed with her full-time job to make ends meet, while Tom turned his attention to the full-time grind.

The operation ran out of their home. Tom went months without a paycheck. Making payroll often meant dipping into personal funds. There was little access to credit and no institutional backing. They kept debt low and expenses tight, buying themselves just enough time to stay in the game a few months longer.

The first real win wasn’t glamorous. It was drywall finishing on a large multifamily job, but it was bigger than anything they’d handled before. The execution was messy, but the outcome was successful. They hit their numbers, impressed the GC, and proved to themselves they could handle scale.

That was enough to get the next call. And the next. More small installs, then bigger scopes. What started as a minor piece of a job turned into full casework across an entire building. When issues came up on site—misaligned windows, gaps other contractors wouldn’t touch—they said yes.

Taking that job brought in a million dollars of additional work at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort. They went in expecting a small crew and quickly found themselves managing dozens of workers on ultra high-end installations for an exacting owner. It was another step up. More visibility, more pressure; but the chance to prove they could deliver.

And they did, so more jobs came. Things started to stack. They relocated operations to an office and hired support staff. Then, back-to-back gamechangers: they won a $5 million bid for a January buildout at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C., and Angie discovered she was pregnant. 

The two were thrilled. But as any parent knows, the transcendent joy that accompanies seeing a little sonogrammed heartbeat is soon thereafter joined by a new fear, one born from the stark realization that you are wholly responsible for this little human’s wellbeing, and that suddenly, the stakes of every decision you make are infinitely higher and the consequences of getting it wrong extend well beyond the self. 

That is terrifying. Tom and Angie experienced this of course, but the grind never stops. A nursery had to be built, Carhart onesies needed to be purchased, and business couldn’t miss a beat. It was going to be a boy, and he was coming in January. 

The D.C. job began on the sixth. Camden arrived on the fifth: healthy, adorable, perfect. He’s got Tom’s eyes and chin, Angie’s nose and brows. They had a couple days to savor the new addition, but it wasn’t looking good in the Capital.

“It didn’t start well,” said Tom.

“It was a very uncomfortable situation. We had a super on site, but he was 5 hours away with 15 people that he does not know.”

“We were doing so bad,” he clarified further.

“It was terrible.”

The company’s reputation was on the line and at that stage in the game, the risk was catastrophic. They had to adjust quickly to the rules of a federal buildout. The bureaucracy and delays. On a normal project, if someone isn't performing, you replace them. On the grounds of the Naval Academy, it wasn't that simple. Every worker required military clearance, a process that took roughly a month.

By the end of the month, Tom was making regular trips down, commuting ten hours through the dead of winter to ensure that the business he started to carve his family a slice of the American dream wouldn’t end up as a nightmare. This trial by fire went on for months, with no one save Camden getting a moment’s rest.

“Yeah, it was tough,” said Tom.

"Oh my god," elaborated Angie, who had to navigate those sacred yet sleepless, painful, and all-consuming first weeks of motherhood while simultaneously keeping the backend of TRE functioning.

“At the beginning, I probably questioned whether we would be in business. I kept thinking ‘I have this baby now, what if I have to go back to my old job’. If we mess up bad, are we going to lose it all?’”

“We threw the kitchen sink at that project,” Tom said. “We had to. I had to. It couldn’t fail. Everything we could think of, we did.”

“And we finished strong. Four weeks ahead of schedule. Everyone was happy and we got to bid more with that GC.”

The couple acknowledge this success as the moment they realized that they had what it took. They had ventured into the inferno and emerged from the other side, battle-hardened and ready for anything.

It turned out that their most challenging year was also the most rewarding. Camden learned to sit, then crawl, then stand. And TRE Construction cleared $10.2 million in revenue, up from $6 million in ’24, and $2 million from their first year.

But the grind never stops. Babies and businesses must grow. Tom and Angie are as busy as ever but are now at phase two: expanding intelligently. The two needed executive leadership to lighten their workload, so they pulled in two seasoned veterans: Rich Amberson and Dave “The Wizard” Curry.

This pair brings decades of experience. Rich handles the project management. Dave, who promised to get a TRE tattoo if this profile referred to him as a wizard, is in charge of estimating. Both free up hours of time for the Egers to keep their eyes on both the horizon and a toddler.

Cam swings by the office every now and then. He’s still learning the ropes but will probably know more about construction than 90 percent of the country by the time he starts grade school. That’s by design.

“The whole goal behind all this is to become a family legacy. We want to do it for someone to take over and make it better in the future. Most of the local groups started from someone just like us. We look up to them because we want to try and build what they have.”

Whether they pull it off remains unknown. Let’s hope so, but it is still entirely possible that Tom and Angie's pursuit ends in sadness. The dream’s just cold that way.

But these two are no longer flailing. And they’re battle hardened now. Seasoned, too. It feels increasingly likely that one day in the distant future, when everyone reading this is long gone, one of Cam's grandchildren might come across a scrapbook or shoebox filled with old photos and root through them, perhaps shaking her head in wonder as she contemplates what life must have been like in the dark ages of 2023, when her great-grandparents started the family business that brought such prosperity and opportunity to their heirs.

Maybe she’ll even come across a photo of Tom and Angie holding her infant grandfather in front of their new office and piece together that this company, their dream, was once hanging on by the thinnest of threads. And perhaps she'll even think: if they could do it, why can't I?