Raymond and the Goliaths

Bourbons And Blogging One HVAC owners way of venting while drinking while building SEO all in one place, and all at one time

Raymond and the Goliaths

For tonight's blog I wanted to pick a Bourbon that gets you in the mood to write blogs that no one will probably ever read. A type of booze that makes you want to dance down the street singing to the Lord with people lookin at you weird.. A glorious swill that gives you the peace you need before you metaphorically sling tiny stones into the foreheads of your massive world dominating enemies.

There is only one bourbon for that job. And THAT bourbon is called Barter House by Orphan Barrel

Imagine if you can, back in 1992 when no one cared about bourbon that much in America outside of your Grandpa and the craze those days was for stupid stuff like Hypnotic. Wu Tang hadn't made 36 chambers yet, so no one even realized that cash was ruling everything around them. People were playing with pogs and supersokers, and your future mom was learning to parallel park while crying alone in her Geo Metro listening to Boys 2 Men sing “End of the Road”. Your Granddad was exhausted from fighting through last year's recession, and It all felt like it was still kinda 80s, but kinda not? I don't know, I was 12 and it was all just a hot mess to me.

Meanwhile… in the middle of all this dumb 90s distraction.. There was someone putting in work behind the scenes that would one day become such a freaking legend that I know, with full clarity, they could never possibly fathom the impact they were to have today.

I'm talking back when your average bourbon went for cheap. I'm talking about Weller for $10 and Pappy for under $100. Most bourbon didn't have cool looking bottles or neat labels. No one cared, and yet there was one guy, who worked for what is now like pennies. Who trained the people who made Pappy and who most of today's top bourbons hail from. That man made this barrel of whiskey, from which bottle I am drinking tonight, and that man is named Edwin Foote.

Edwin was in charge of a distillery that inevitably closed down in 1992 due to being old and worn out. A new distillery was opened down the road with all kinds of fancy new machines, to make booze production cleaner and easier to make. In the move, a lot of shit was kinda left in the old warehouse, and a bunch of new stuff from the new warehouse was stored in the old one to age. Essentially a place where barrels could sit quietly and collect 20 years of dust. And like a quarter won by the calling of the right face, some barrels should never be mixed back into the mass. Thankfully some were rightly set aside and eventually shoved back into the pockets of the dark warehouse. Places where major distilleries who moved tons of volume pulled many millions of gallons, and all the while these barrels were left…. till now.

This is where Orphan Barrel comes in.

Flash Forward 20 years, it's 2012 and the world of booze is much like the world of HVAC is now! Massive conglomerates stepped in and bought up every freaking company you could imagine and what was at one time people working together, like Ed and The Van Winkles (Pappy) now are split up into enormous name brands. The Pappy bottles being sold by Buffalo Trace company were going for $6k a bottle in 2012, which is more than they are now even, and the corporations were salivating on the profits. Yet the dude who actually trained the Van Winkles and hand made pappy before the old distillery was closed down had barrels under what is now a competing brand, and with a weaker name like Seagrams, they were sitting around doing nothing. In some less snobby realms, you could call them the Barrel version of “Dusties”.

So a group of people who seemed to know more about marketing than bourbon history were given what they thought was a challenge. Off load old barrels for big bucks. They decided to call the barrels “lost to time”, Orphans if you will. Abandoned by change of stations or the switch of home bases. So when these bottles are done being drunk up… the game is over.

And here we are - these bottles go for some serious cash, in the case of this bottle, anywhere between $500-$800.00 Yet, if you can get your hands on one, you will know the truth.

A masters work ages magnificently

Those that pour themselves into their art and master it, have a rippling effect on any industry, and even 30 years later their work shines as supreme. As I sit at my desk writing this blog, I now sip a bourbon made in the 90s by a man who cared so much about the quality of what he made, that he could care less about what it was being sold for. And the thing he wants most…. Now that he can be richer than his wildest dreams… is to be left alone in peace and quiet.

So how does all this mess relate to TruNorth? How does it tie into HVAC, and what the heck does it have to do with David and Goliath???

Well everything

Just like the American Whiskey distilleries were all bought up by monstrous corporations in the early 2000s, and then pumped into the stratosphere with massive marketing campaigns creating huge price surges, the HVAC industry is seeing a similar trend now.

All around us, HVAC companies that have been established for dozens of years are being offered 7 to 10x EBIDA to sell out to private equity firms. Even myself, who has only owned this business for 4.5 years, gets dozens of buy out offers every month from brokers mostly located in Manhattan or Boca Raton, with an eagerness to sell my business to the “top bidder”.

If I wanted…. by tomorrow morning.. I could make myself a millionaire and retire for the rest of my life, having taken the company from $400k to $6m in less than 5 years with a pay out of 8 figures.

But at the expense of who? And what happens to the culture we built?

The dilemma I face is a simple one. I already know what happens when these companies get bought out. I have seen it first hand and experienced the change in culture that happens. I have watched my paycheck slashed back 40-50% to pay back investors. I watched the OG’s rush out of the company to find smaller places before the smaller places ran out of room to hire. I have seen the political games that get played in the office when the “big wigs” step in sniffing around, looking for the right “yes-men” who they need to replace the stubborn staff with. I watched the head strong leadership who fought back and lost. The same guys who taught us everything that made us stand out from all the competitors were replaced by a talking head with a degree in power point.

I struggled to pay my bills because of these people and their agendas. In my opinion it's not only affecting Bourbon and HVAC, it's affecting everything in America. That's why it fits. It fits everything in America right now!

The same people who were masters of their craft, who built the companies I worked for into the monsters that deserved the growth they were blessed with… the people who were masters like Edwin…I watched them get left in the corners of the warehouse like the bourbon I'm drinking because they were unwilling to play the game.

And what did Ed do in the end? He took his ball and went home. And now people interview him and ask him what it was like working with actual Van Winkles. I have my own Vanwinkles in this game, and sadly some of my HVAC mentors have already passed away.

So I refuse to play a game that tears down. A game that always has the same ending. A game that has more losers than winners. And if you are googling “Massive corporations effects on the bourbon industry” right now… you can see what the future of HVAC is destined to look like.

Let's take a real life example

I go to a supply house I have never used before and say “Hey.. I think I’m over paying on this evaporator coil, can you show me what I can buy them for if I switched to you?”

What I end up getting is a price that is within $20-$50 of the price I am paying now. When I went to 5 other supply houses and asked them the same question, I found they all had the same result. Everyone within the same tight spread. Everyone EXACTLY in the same price point. Strange right?

Now keep this in mind. I used to buy evaporator coils for $300 in 2020 and now they are built almost the same in 2025, even with 454b changes, yet they are being sold for anywhere from $850 to $1500.00 today? Quite a price increase right? Yet when you look at residential HVAC on a national level, everything you read shows HVAC purchasing is down over the whole country in 2025. Wait what? But TruNorth is up 40% over 2024. Doesn't growth equal better buying power? Shouldn't they be offering us better deals to get us to stock up since we have momentum?

But the price isn't down though for us is it?

When I look deeper into the situation I find the manufacturing companies that are raising the prices of all these products are all majority owned by private equity firms. And these firms are tied in with firms that are buying out the HVAC companies. The companies I come up against every day. The ones the customer tells me they are getting “competitive bids” from.

Giants with Billions of dollars of PE money backing them. Do you think they get the same pricing from the supply houses that we do? Do you think they even bother calling the supply houses at all?

Do you think the manufacturers are raising the pricing for materials on the HVAC companies that their parent companies are tied to? Why would they raise the price on themselves right?

And when you go to get pricing for a new HVAC system and you call 5 companies in the area, are you aware that there is a strong chance that 3 - 4 of them could be owned by the same firm?

Did you know that if you're drinking Blantons, Pappy, Eagle Rare, E.H., or Weller or Stagg that you're really just drinking Bourbons owned by Buffalo Trace.

So when you're sipping an Orphan Barrel while ordering Carrier products and shopping parts on Johnstone's website, did you know that you're buying from publicly traded companies with majority shares held by Black Rock?

Do you know that the PE firms that buy out my competition all keep the original names of the hvac companies so you cant tell your standing in front of a giant Philistine with an army of investors behind them?

Did you know that you can go into any Facebook group around chester county and ask “Who do you recommend for HVAC” within an hour there will be roughly 110 hvac companies mentioned and even though about 60% of them are little guys, the Goliaths that are hidden in the mix own a dozen names in the same area and are pulling in collectively $400m or more out of just Chester County alone?

I guess you wouldn't know who to sling a stone at if you don't know who's a giant and who's a little sheep herder right?

And so here we are full circle

And yet… In all this chaos…. And in all this corruption we stand firm as a company. We are growing! We are getting bigger and stronger every single day. And it's not because we are better than anyone else. It's certainly not because we have better pricing. We typically are the higher price of much of these PE firm backed companies. In fact, we find them dropping their price the minute they hear our name called out by the consumer.

So it's not the price, and it's clearly not the marketing power so what it is?

Well that's easy! It's Deuteronomy 9! It's that simple. And in case you don't feel like looking it up, I'll post it here for you. Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky. The people are strong and tall—Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?” But be assured today that the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the Lord has promised you. After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. And as crazy as I might sound right now I truly believe this. This is where my hope lies. In knowing that every single story that ever existed in history always and forever repeats itself!

THERE IS HOPE FOR ALL OF US! So who can stand up against these firms with all their Billions and all their powerful connections??

Yahweh Can!

And that's who I serve, so I know we can too! TruNorth can and we will!

All it takes is a little faith, a lot of love, and most of all a lack of fear.

People who press down on others for their own gain will always have a maker to answer to, and those of us…. The little sheep herders in life.. We will always have a greater shepherd to guide us into greener pastures. For me that is Jesus the Messiah. He IS Yahweh! And this is my proclamation So with all that said it's a battle for the ages I guess right?

Sadly I'm not sure there's a Samuel or a Nathan around to map out our story. So maybe that's something for me to do. Here, with my bourbon and my blogs and my audience of 2 lol.

So let these blog posts act as my little smooth river stone. Blogs that I sling at the Giants from the opposite side of the battlefield. Because thats exactly what it is these days. A battlefield.

I truly hope Y'all enjoy reading these silly blogs I make. And if you do, if you really like them, do me a favor. Send me an email to Rstubbs@trunorthhvac.com with just one word in the header. Chicken Sandwiches. If you do that I will know you made it to the end of this story.

I thank you for being a customer, or a reader, or even a competitor trying to destroy us every single day. God bless you all, for He allows the sun to rise on his friends and His enemies- not because He has to but because He loves us that much. Amen