Draft:Modern Sheet Metal Heating and Cooling

• Comment: Please see WP:NCOMPANY. Hitro talk 14:32, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

---

Modern Sheet Metal Incorporated was founded in 1963 by Wesley Ring and Clay Tease. The company specializes in residential heating and cooling. Initially, Modern Sheet Metal was located in Appleton, Wisconsin. About twenty years later, the company moved to its present location in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Soon after starting the company, Clay became ill and was forced to sell his share. In 1966, Wesley Ring became the sole owner of Modern Sheet Metal. Following in this father’s footsteps, Wesley’s eldest son, Dave, joined the business in 1972. Shortly after, Wesley’s youngest son, Tom, began working full time at the company. After Wesley’s retirement in 1995, sons Dave and Tom became co-owners of Modern Sheet Metal. Dave’s son, Jeff Ring, started working full time with the company in 1998. Jeff became the third generation owner of Modern Sheet Metal in 2019 when Dave and Tom retired.

Modern Sheet Metal is a Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer. It sells and installs all makes and models of Carrier equipment. However, the service technicians will service other brands of furnaces or air conditioning units. The firm also specializes in air cleaners, boilers, humidifiers, and radiant heat.

Modern Sheet Metal employs over twenty employees in three divisions: new construction, replacement, and service. New construction has a manager that does the bidding, and overseeing two full time crews. Replacement has a sales manager and two full crews. The Service department is overseen by a manager who does the dispatching of four technicaians. There are three office personnel, two of whom focus on the accounting end of the business.

Modern Sheet Metal offers several benefits to its employees. The company matches up to three percent in a simple IRA plan. The employees also receive a small life insurance and disabilty policy, as well as company paid health insurance. Each employee is able to accumulate personal time off.

For tracking job history and warranty purposes, both new construction and replacement track serial numbers on all pieces of equipment (i.e. furnaces, air conditioner, thermostats) used on the job. The company uses software to track job history and inventory. Equipment is purchased for a specific job, division, and general inventory. Each quarter the inventory is tracked to verify the location of any equipment that has not been billed or sold yet.

The heating and cooling industry is a seasonal trade. Spring and fall are the busiest times; and weather greatly impacts the revenue. A hot summer or a cold winter equates to more requests for service work due to equipment failures. Many times this will generate increased replacements. The company can see large swings from being exceptionally busy and employees working overtime to not having enough work for a 40-hour week for all the employees.

One of the biggest hurdles has been the name that was selected for the company. In the 1960s sheet metal duct work was very important in heating homes. The two founding partners, therefore, incorporated this into the name. Even though the use of sheet metal has not changed, consumers do not identify the company name with the trade the company specializes in. In recognizing this, the company has started to rebrand the company as Modern Sheet Metal Heating and Cooling. All of the company trucks, mailers, business cards, and letterhead has either shrunken the “sheet metal” or gotten rid of it all together.

References

Ring, D. (2015, July 8). Telephone interview.

Ring, D.W. (2015, July 8). Personal interview.

Ring, T. (2015, July 8). Personal interview.