Ames True Value Hardware and Supply owner Wayne Averill stands in an aisle of the Wiscasset store. Averill, who has worked in retail since he was in high school, said he couldnt imagine doing anything else. (Sherwood Olin photo)
More than 40 years after he first joined the family business, Wayne Averill still loves coming to work.
He started in high school, working in the Agway store his grandfather, Daniel Ames, opened on Water Street in Wiscasset in the 1960s. After the original store was destroyed by a fire in 1970, Ames moved the business to Route 1 where it became a True Value hardware store. He was later joined in the business by his daughter Arlene Averill Steen and her three boys, Jeff, Steve, and Wayne.
In 2004, the Averill family relocated the store to its current location at 447 Bath Road, opening what remains the largest True Value store in the state, Ames True Value Hardware and Supply. Today, Averill still comes to work almost every day, regularly putting in work weeks of 60-plus hour.
“Different sales people that I talk too,” he said. “Different owners, you never see them. They just don’t even stop in and there is nothing wrong with that. I mean, that’s fine. You can do that, but it wouldn’t be for me. I like to know what’s going on.”
Averill typically starts his days early, waking after 3 a.m. in order to make it into work around 4 a.m. The store officially opens at 7 a.m. Monday through Saturday and stays open to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 5 p.m. on Saturday, but customers are known to start stopping in whenever they notice the lights are on.
If the lights are on and the doors are open, Averill said he is open for business.
For Averill, the store has always been and remains a family business. His mother died in 2024 and Jeff and Steve retired in 2022 and 2025, respectively.
“My brothers had been here just as much as I had, for years,” Averill said. “Jeff was always the front-end man, you know, right there, and he just knows everybody. Then Steve did the paint. That was his focus, and all that, so when they decided to retire, it was a big, big change.”
Averill credited his in-store staff, many of whom have been with the business for years, recognizing the change in leadership his crew rallied to fill the void, Averill said. So much so, that recent arrivals may not even suspect there was ever cause for concern.
Now the sole owner, Averill said it is possible the next generation will continue the business. He currently works with his son Sumner, who is “just as crazy” about the business as he is, Wayne Averill said. His daughter, Audrey Blagdon, is occupational therapist by training but she has contributed to the store’s expanded toy and clothing departments.
Averill also works with his wife Peggy. He wouldn’t imagine it any other way, he said. Sometimes they will only see each for the few minutes they can find to eat lunch together.
“Sometimes it’ll be on 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock, and then sometimes it’ll be, ‘Wow, no sense to bother now,’” he said. “We’re just going to have a bigger supper … I just can’t imagine her not being here.”
Averill does have a family camp up north he likes to get away too, but even when he has the time he is not a man prone to down time. He does have some success scheduling an extra day or two around any one of the half-dozen or so industry conventions he attends every year.
“You got to keep busy, you know?” he said. “And I don’t hunt or fish or whatever. This is my fun.”
As a people person, the best thing about his job is the variety, he said, He could go from unloading freight to helping a customer, making major business decisions all in the same day.
“I’m just a very lucky person,” he said. “Just accepting challenges and figuring things out, the whole mix. It’s such a variety, because I can be doing anything from unloading the truck to mixing paint, to sweeping the floors in the morning. It’s just anything so I can be a janitor or a manager, everything, all in one day.”
Another benefit of being in the store daily is it allows him to keep in touch with his customers, Averill said. Being part of the community not only good common sense it is good business sense.
One benefit of being a local business, according to Averill, is the ability to respond quickly to meet the immediate needs of its customers.
“Being local, you can adjust to the weather quicker,” he said. “We can adapt by getting some extra wood blocks or wood pellets or whatever. Whereas, the nationals (chains) are like ‘Well, gosh, you know, it’s not that season anymore, so let’s move on.’ I think that’s one of the strengths that local businesses have, that you can really adjust, whether it’s a storm coming or whatever. We will scramble and find things to help along, or whether it’s kerosene cans or whatever it is.”
Responding to customer interest, one of the more recent additions to the store is the addition of a small firearms department. Averill said the department is outgrowth of meeting a need in the area. One of his employees, Ryan Cromwell, has his federal firearms license and for the last few years, Ames True Value has facilitated the transfer of a firearm from seller to buyer.
The weapon is shipped to the store and Cromwell handles the required paperwork with the buyer. Not too long after Cromwell started fielding requests for special orders, Averill recognized the need and set up a dedicated space in the store.
“Then it got to be that people said there’s a need, and we had this space that wasn’t really being utilized, and so we built that area,” Averill said.
Ames True Value has long been known in the Wiscasset community for its support of community causes, lending space for bake sale tables to support Wiscasset Feed our Scholars, providing space in the parking lot for a carwash and sometimes donating goods to serve as prizes in fundraising contests. The years of support earned Wayne and Peggy Averill the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce Community Impact Award in May 2024.
Averill said he appreciated the honor but it is the efforts of the volunteers that really make a community go. He doesn’t get to as many community events as he might like, Averill said, but he always enjoys it when he gets a chance to see people enjoying an event he has contributed to.
“You support it behind the scenes, and you get to go see it, and stand back and see what everybody’s enjoying,” he said. “It’s pretty cool. All those things that happen, it takes a lot of people. That’s why I’m never afraid to donate something. I mean, those are the people that are doing all the work. It takes a lot to put those on.”
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