What Matters to HVAC Contractors and What Makes Them Loyal
I recently wrote this article for a sister publication of HVACRTrends, ElectricalTrends (and did you also know we publish Industrial Supply Trends and US Lighting Trends?) I’m sharing it because it is about contractors. And the reality is that contractor behavior across construction trades is very similar. The big difference for the HVAC industry, and it is similar in…
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Did an Elephant Show Up at the Applied AI Conference?
Mark McGready, Director Data Analytics and Solutions for IDEA, attended the 2026 Applied AI for Distributors Conference organized by Distribution Strategy Group. While he spoke…
Refrigeration Technologies’ Viper EZDose
By now you should have heard that Refrigeration Technologies, the Southern California-based manufacturer behind the Viper® line of non-toxic HVACR chemical solutions, recently introduced the…
The Air Inside Your Home or Office May Be Making You Sick. And Most of Us Have No Idea.
Recently I was scrolling through LI and came across Chris Baca, who had an interesting posting on something in the HVAC space. I looked at…
Blue Hawk Brings Construct CRM to its Members
Integrating with your customers provides an opportunity to add value to them and help solidify your role as their preferred distributor. The key is recognizing…
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The Air Inside Your Home or Office May Be Making You Sick. And Most of Us Have No Idea.
Recently I was scrolling through LI and came across Chris Baca, who had an interesting posting on something in the HVAC space. I looked at his background … 20 years in the HVAC distribution (along with a detour into the elevator space!). Given the original intent of LI, networking, I reached out to get acquainted. Earlier this week we had…
Blue Hawk Brings Construct CRM to its Members
Integrating with your customers provides an opportunity to add value to them and help solidify your role as their preferred distributor. The key is recognizing the reality … that they also need to buy from your competitors (credit, availability, brands, location, price, etc) and enabling this (remember the phrase, “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered!”) Recently I wrote about a…
DOE Furnace Rule Fight Exposes Gap Between Energy Policy and HVAC Field Reality
TL;DR: This article argues that the fight over the DOE furnace and water heater rule is really a fight over whether energy policy reflects how HVAC systems are installed in the real world. Higher-efficiency equipment has clear value, but mandates become problematic when they ignore retrofit constraints, labor shortages, consumer affordability, and regional infrastructure differences. The better path is a…
Adding a Nudge to Your Sales Coaching, at the Point of Impact
Every conference has some session about AI. And every reception at every conference has someone asking about what you’re doing with AI. So, imagine being at a conference that is all about AI and where everyone is talking AI 24x7x3. This is what will happen next week at DSG’s Applied AI conference in Chicago. If you are attending get ready…
The AI Boom Exposing the HVACR Industry
TL;DR: The AI buildout is creating a cooling challenge the HVAC/R industry cannot treat like traditional comfort applications. As rack densities rise and heat loads intensify, success will depend on precision design, verified commissioning, tighter field execution, and much better training. In the author’s view, the industry’s biggest risk is not demand—it is assuming “good enough” practices can survive mission-critical…
Why the Shift to Service Is Making Diagnostics a Distributor Opportunity
As the HVAC/R industry shifts away from a replacement-driven model and toward service, maintenance, and repair, the implications extend well beyond the contractor. For distributors, this transition is reshaping what customers need most: not just equipment and parts availability, but stronger support around diagnostics, troubleshooting, training (such as the vacuuming testing Don Gillis shared), and application knowledge. In a market…
Schneider Electric Delivers Green for HVAC Through UL ECOLOGO
ESG … sustainability. Many publicly-held companies believe in it and promote it. Some issue lengthy reports about their ESG initiatives. Rather than “just publish,” I frequently ask “what is the benefit of this to end-customers? to distributors?” And surprisingly, 99% of the people (probably PR and marcom roles) don’t respond. The end-result, I don’t publish. Schneider Electric’s PR firm took…
TUG Connects: More Than an Infor Conference
Infor is one of the most prominent ERP systems serving the HVACR market. Last month their users group, TUG, which is independently run, held their annual event. If your company operates on the Infor platform, this is where your IT and sales operations group (as well as others depending upon the agenda) go to keep your company on the leading…
