Construction and general labor staffing.

Construction and general labor is where Labor Exchange started. When Bill Peterson founded the company back in 2012, the first calls were from general contractors on Knoxville job sites who needed laborers that morning. That urgency hasn’t changed. Construction still runs on fixed timelines with shifting labor needs, and the gap between how many workers you have and how many you need moves week to week. We’ve spent more than a decade building a crew of construction-experienced workers who understand job site safety, hard physical work, and the pace a GC has to keep. From a two-person cleanup to a twenty-person site-prep team, we scale your labor up and down without the overhead of permanent hires.

Bill’s wife, Kelly, runs the company today, and the heart of it hasn’t changed either. We’re in the people business. Honestly, we love putting people to work, and that shows up in who we send you. Every worker is a W-2 employee of Labor Exchange, not a 1099 contractor, so we carry the payroll, the payroll taxes, the workers’ comp, and the screening. You pay one all-in rate and get one invoice. No misclassification risk, no surprise costs, just reliable hands on your site, ready today.

We’re family-owned and based right here in South Knoxville, not a franchise dispatched from another state. Our workers live across Knox, Blount, and Sevier counties, they know these roads, and a lot of them have been with us for years. When you call, you talk to someone who knows the folks we’re sending and can tell you straight whether we’ve got you covered today.

Construction is where we started, but it’s far from all we do. Across East Tennessee, the same kind of dependable, ready-today labor keeps warehouses loading, plant floors running, trucks moving, grounds maintained, and events set up and torn down on time. We send people for all of it. If the work is physical, if it needs to be covered on short notice, and if it matters who actually shows up, it’s the kind of order we fill every day. Honestly, the industry on the work ticket changes more than the promise does: pre-screened people, ready today, treated like family.

Roles we dispatch

Where general labor goes to work around here

Same kind of worker, very different job sites. These are the everyday general-labor orders we fill across East Tennessee.

Construction staffing by location

Three counties, three very different construction markets. Click your area for location-specific details.

Project types we staff

The towns and corridors we cover

We dispatch out of South Knoxville, and from there we reach most of East Tennessee on a normal morning. That means Knoxville and all of Knox County, Maryville, Alcoa, and the rest of Blount County, and Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg out in Sevier County. We also send workers up toward Oak Ridge and Anderson County and to the smaller towns in between. If your site sits along I-40, I-75, the Parkway, Alcoa Highway, or the 411 and 441 corridors, odds are we already send people past it.

Being regional is the whole point of a hub like ours. A single warehouse might need ten loaders for a heavy week, a plant might want steady production help for a month, a builder might need a framing crew for the season, and an event might need forty hands for one Saturday. We pull from one deep, pre-screened crew that lives across these counties, so we can cover a lot of different work without staffing it from a call center three states away. You get neighbors who know the roads and show up ready, whatever the job turns out to be.

Why a local crew matters

A national agency treats East Tennessee as a pin on a map and staffs it from a call center in another state. We’re right here in South Knoxville, and our workers live across Knox, Blount, and Sevier counties. They know how the traffic moves around I-40 and the Parkway, they get to the gate on time, and a lot of them come back to the same crews week after week. A worker who lives nearby and shows up ready is worth far more than a name pulled off a distant list, and that reliability is what lands on your job site.

Because we’re family-owned and not a franchise, the relationship is personal. We remember which workers fit your sites and try to send those same folks back, so your superintendent isn’t starting over every morning. When weather pushes a pour or a schedule shifts, you call one local number and we adjust the same day. Honestly, that’s the whole reason to work with neighbors who care who shows up.

What to expect when you call us

Reaching out for the first time is simple. Tell us the kind of work, how many people you need, the start time, and where the job site is. We’ll tell you honestly whether we can cover it that day, and most days we can. Our office opens at 6:30 AM, so an early call usually means workers on your site the same morning. Even brand-new clients can get a crew dispatched the day they call.

On the worker’s side, getting started takes two forms of ID for the I-9 and about fifteen minutes of paperwork. If your site needs drug screening or background checks, just ask and we’ll set it up before anyone shows up. You get one all-in hourly rate per worker that already covers their pay, payroll taxes, workers’ comp, and screening, and one clean invoice at the end. We pay our workers daily, which is a big reason good people keep coming back to us, and that reliability lands on your job site.

One rate, one W-2 crew, whatever the industry

Here’s the part that stays the same whether you’re staffing a loading dock, a plant floor, or a job site: every person we send is a W-2 employee of Labor Exchange, not a 1099 contractor. We carry the payroll, the payroll taxes, the workers’ comp, and the screening, and you pay one all-in hourly rate per worker with one clean invoice at the end. That keeps the math simple and it keeps you clear of the misclassification headaches that come with calling temporary workers contractors.

It matters more than it used to. Across warehousing, manufacturing, and construction alike, the question of who is actually covering comp and taxes on temporary labor comes up more every year, and the answer with us is always the same: we are. Drug screening and background checks are available on request for the industries and sites that need them. So whether you’re a plant manager, a warehouse supervisor, or a general contractor, you’re getting the same clean, covered, ready-today crew, just pointed at different work.

What general-labor work actually asks of a worker

Plenty of these jobs don’t need a certification or a trade, but they all need the same thing: someone who shows up on time, works hard in the heat or the cold, follows the safety rules, and comes back the next day. That’s harder to find than it sounds, and honestly, it’s the whole reason we pre-screen and why daily pay matters so much. Our workers get paid the day they work, and that’s a big part of why dependable people stay with us instead of drifting off to the next gig.

For the work that does need more, we have it. We keep OSHA-10 and OSHA-30 trained workers for sites that require them, forklift-experienced hands for the warehouses, and people who’ve done the heavy, awkward lifting that moving and event work demands. When you call, tell us what the day really looks like, the lifting, the pace, the conditions, and we’ll send people who fit it instead of folks who turn around at the gate.

Common questions