Q: While having my new heat pump installed I couldn’t help notice the way your technician’s vans were organized. That must be hard to maintain day after day.
A: If you only knew the half of it. Being pretty much a completely mobile heating and cooling company, we go to your homes and business 24 hours a day. That may be right down the street from our Kalispell office or outside of West Glacier in a snow storm. Those warehouses on wheels gotta be at the ready because your next call may be in Marion, Bigfork, or better yet Polson (it’s a beautiful drive). Like any adventure you need to be prepared but you can’t take it all. Therein lies the rub. Is it better to suffer the slings and arrows of not having the right part, or to be mired in stuff you seldom need? There is efficiency to be gained by walking that fine line between clean and clutter.
And off they go as the vans leave our parking lot heading in different directions and widely different tasks. On any one day we will have a leaking boiler in Evergreen, a broken commercial rooftop unit in Whitefish, a ductless heat pump install in Creston, and a heat recovery ventilator replacement in Rollins. Boy oh boy we get around as there isn’t much in the heating, cooling, and ventilation world we don’t maintenance, fix, or replace. During the course of any busy day in the Flathead our vans go from reasonably organized to deplorable dumps as the old parts pile up and usually accompanied by a rusty hulk of a furnace drug from another wonderful crawl space. Out with the old and in with the new sounds great but when they occupy the same small space in your van, organization can go out the window.
How each technician handles the clutter and the clatter has always been interesting to me. Having been doing this about 40 years now, I have seen a few trucks and the men that make a living out of them. You would think that the most organized technician is certainly the most efficient and hopefully the most profitable. This clearly is not always the case from my observations. On the other hand, some of these trucks (never ours) are just a big ol’ messes and how anyone can work out of them efficiently I’ll never know. However, contrary to what you may think, some of these technicians rock the heating and cooling world fixing stuff right and making money. Nothing is in its place but they know where everything is (or so they say). How origination manifests itself may depend on genetics, which sign you were born under (I’m a Libra), or if your parents made you arrange your sock drawer.
As you may imagine, when the chips are down we find ourselves working some pretty long hours. That leaves little time for prepping and preening. Its not so unusual to just be dog tired, get back to the shop, and say we will clean the rig in the morning. That next morning can be rough, kind of like a level eight hangover (eight out of ten). Opening the van doors reveals yesterday’s mess, a projects ugly remains take you right back to a crawl space best forgotten. A quick tidy up and off we go again. So, when we roll up to get your cooling back on or put in a brand-new system don’t look too closely but maybe sneak a peek, it could be revealing. As always, give AirWorks a call with any of your heating and cooling needs, (406) 630-4170
