Today’s Ag Perspectives Podcast features a Hall of Famer that has helped thousands of livestock producers in the southwest get top dollar for their animals through his sixty plus years at the Oklahoma National Stockyards. Oklahoma Farm Report’s Ron Hays sat down with Tom Gilliam at the market known as the “World’s Largest Stocker and Feeder Cattle Market” just a month ahead of his 90th birthday and talked with him about growing up in southwest Oklahoma, graduating from Oklahoma State University and starting his life’s work at one of the Commission Firms at the Oklahoma National Stockyards.
The story of Tom Gilliam’s career at the Oklahoma National Stockyards began in 1959 at the Farmers Commission Company. For the modest sum of $100 a week, Gilliam’s first role was far from glamorous: he was responsible for washing the manure from the hog pens.
Opportunity knocked just a few months into his tenure when the company’s veteran hog salesman fell ill. Asked if he could step into the role, Gilliam didn’t hesitate. He accepted the challenge, even though it meant he had to continue washing the pens while taking on the responsibilities of a salesman—all for the same $100 a week. From there, he moved on to Interstate Commission and moved over from hog buying to cattle.
Fast forward through the years and being involved in working for multiple Commission Firms the late 1980s. Gilliam and long time partner Bill Griffeth purchased Stockman Livestock Commission Co. in 1987. They were inaugural inductees into the Cattle Marketers Hall of Fame in 2019. Earlier in his career- Gilliam was inducted into the Oklahoma Ag Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Oklahoma Pork Council Hall of Fame in 2006.
Ron and Tom talked about his life in the business, how the business has changed, his family, faith and more.
