You’ve seen the signs around town. Korte Does it All! Plumbing, heating, air conditioning, electricity, the works.
The company founded in 1965 by patriarch Jerry Korte grew from one guy riding around in a truck to 100 people today. Korte’s headquarters on Stellhorn Road is a gleaming affair with a lobby, conference rooms and plenty of space.
On the second floor, a viewing gallery looks out over a well-stocked warehouse, just in case a customer’s hot water heater has exploded or a heating system just conked out.
Technicians fan out in the region, their trucks tracked by a GPS system that keeps them connected to job after job. And now that the cold has come, and it’s the season of burst pipes, customers will be glad to know there’s a weekend crew, taking emergency calls.
But worrying over his inventory of generators or water heaters or expanding his already successful business isn’t what keeps Jerry Korte up at night.
No, it’s the state of the trades. “We just want to get more of them (high school students) interested in it. They (students) don’t even know where to go to get into the trades,” Korte says.
He pores over publications like the Airconditioning Heating and Refrigeration News, a Troy, Michigan, publication that inspire him to expand the trades.
Headlines like “Five Ways to get Five Star Recruits into HVAC” get him thinking. Why not have a “National Signing Day” when a young man or woman announces he or she wants to get into plumbing or electrical?