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The thing is that this has been the mildest summer here in years. We had warm spurts of about 2 weeks total and 1 was 1 week and the other was a few weeks later. It just never got warm here this year.

It is weird how the markets are so different from state to state. Here in the MD/DC area there is not enough "qualified" technicians to fill the jobs out there. Maybe I take it for granted but a job has NEVER been something that I personally have worried about loseing. I or any 1/2 decent commercial technician can have 3 jobs withen a matter of minutes here. Every commercial company withen 200 miles of here would hire a good technician withen seconds !! From reading the replies to this post I see most are residential guys getting laid off! I have never heard of a commercial technician getting laid off. It may be time to evolve with the times and move up to commercial work. You will ALWAYS have a job.

I took a job with a local company(-----) and they send me out on weekend calls and overtime but I sit at home during the day. 31 hours for 2 week pay period. If it don't get better I will be out of money soon.

If anybody needs a good serviceman/sales/estimator..
25 years HVAC
Universal certified
Geo-Thermal
aircooled53@yahoo.com

I know of a couple of companies that are hiring right now 1 of which I made a post about. Longhorn Heat and Air is looking for a heat pump start up tech at the very least and they are also needing a regular service tech as well. I posted their info if you look for post made by me in this section lately. There are one or 2 others I do not have much info on ATM.

This has been a horrible year as far as business. 1 week we are slammed and I need 4 guys and the next week everything stops and I am trying to keep busy who I have. Most mild summer I have ever seen. The other day you could smell fall was coming as well. Heating calls will start soon and end soon as well. Time to get out the preventative maintnence list and work on those for a while.

Tough times

I called 821 HVAC retailer listings in the phone books and out of them, 478 were still in business. This was in Ohio mostly southern and in May as part of a National Sales Manager job. The economy is still very rough out there. Since that in looking for work the most I have been able to find is $16.00 to start with maybe some medical coverage help. This is not the best climate to be unemployed in however some of us have no choice. Still looking.

Originally posted by Frank_G
Last fall we decided to call every A/C listing in the Fw & Dallas Yellow pages. The majority had been disconnected. It was over 100 in Dallas by the time we reached M's.

This year has to be worse!

Frank

There is usually a lot of turnover as guys decide to go out on thier own, then go out of buisness within a couple of year. This year is much worse though, there are older established companies going under and closing up.

A few years back I saw an article that said something like 15,000 HVAC service companies start up every year nationwide, and about the same number go out of buisness.

We picked up quite a few new customers in the last couple of months that called us because the company they had been using for years went out of buisness. Most of the new customers are a neighbor of an existing customer that refered them to us. Most of the rest found us through the Comfort Specialist listing on Trane's web site. VERY few of our new customers were the result of our limited marketing efforts.

Last fall we decided to call every A/C listing in the Fw & Dallas Yellow pages. The majority had been disconnected. It was over 100 in Dallas by the time we reached M's.

This year has to be worse!

Frank

A lot of companies are hurting bad. The last 3 winters have been very mild, even by north Texas standards, and this has been a VERY cool summer. Last summer was mild also, but not nearly like this summer.

We need another 1998!

Hmmmmm sounds like alot of companies might be going out of business here in DFW if no one is hiring and letting people go..........wow been in the business for 3 years and never seen it this bad. Having second thoughts about this field now.