Tales from the trenches, stories forged in the fires of experience.
This episode recorded at the 2024 National HVACR Education Conference and proves that
education is a lifelong journey.
All right, everyone.
Thank you for joining us.
We are hanging out at the 2024 National HVACR Education Conference, and I'm spending time
with Ray Coker and Harvey Kaplan.
How are you gentlemen?
Oh, very good.
Real good.
So we are here to learn about things that are transitioning in the industry, and we're
here to continue our education.
And I think it's very important for people to understand that education, particularly
in our industry, is never ending.
As technicians, as educators, contractors, we constantly need to update our education
to know what's happening in the industry.
And I would love for the two of you to share your experiences, and most importantly, share
how long you've been in the industry and what you find at the conference.
I started out in the industry in about 1962.
I was in the Air Force at the time, and I decided I needed some extra money.
So I went over to Mobile, Alabama, and went to a York school and came back.
And the big uphill dude ranch out there by the Biloxi Air Force Base needed technician
to take care of all of their refrigeration, air conditioning equipment, kitchen equipment.
And so I worked there part time for them.
And then later on, I was teaching computers.
Air Force was lucky to me, or good to me.
They sent me to Kingston, New York to learn computers.
I came back, worked, taught computers for about three years.
And then lo and behold, IBM came in and offered me about three times my Air Force salary,
and it took about 10 seconds to decide what to do.
And so then I went to Huntsville, Alabama for a year, worked on the Apollo launch vehicle
computer.
And then they said, hey, Rafe, you grew up in Texas.
How'd you like to go to Texas?
And I says, sounds good.
So we moved down to Houston, and I was a flight controller on all of the Apollo missions.
Oh my goodness.
Well, we lost our astronauts to one of the fires.
As flight controllers, we had nothing to do.
We'd already had all of our mission training, all the simulations and everything else.
And so I got bored and I went back into the air conditioning business part time.
I still had to go to NASA every day for eight hours.
And I worked nights and weekends and became one of the largest York dealers in Galveston
County.
Nice.
Well, I went ahead and stayed with the IBM throughout all the Apollo missions and the
first shuttle mission, and then decided I'd retire.
And that lasted about three years.
And then I went back into a similar type air conditioning situation.
And now I own a refrigerator recovery and reclamation company in Lake City, Texas.
And we deal with the large contractors, schools, hospitals, and chemical plants.
I attend these seminars up here to keep track of what the next chemical refrigerant is going
to be so that I'll know how to go ahead and redesign my equipment to handle the new refrigerants.
Absolutely.
I've already went ahead and started getting some R32, one of the A2L refrigerants.
And I've already went ahead and explosion proofed my system that reclaims that refrigerant.
I'm glad it's a one chemical that way it's easy to reclaim and get it back to normal
specs of brand new refrigerant.
And so that's about what I've been doing.
And I enjoy coming to these seminars I started when they first started coming to Las Vegas
years and years ago.
And I think I've missed only two of them.
And so I sure appreciate Esco.
And we appreciate you being here.
Harvey?
Well, I have a similar experience.
I started back in 1961 as an electrician and I wound up with a reputation of being a good
control guy.
And air conditioning, particularly in the residential world, was a virgin industry back
in 1962, 63.
When I was offered a job in refrigeration and air conditioning.
And I would have stayed where I was as an electrician, except that I was making top
pay at that point, which was $2.50 an hour.
And I was offered $3.50 to go there.
And at that point I had a wife, a mortgage, a car payment and two children.
So that was a no brainer.
So on the first day at the job, the boss handed me a copy of here's a pump, modern refrigeration,
which was if you guys remember the old green book, you wouldn't remember.
No, I see them.
Yeah.
But anyway, so and it was about an inch thick or what have you.
And he said, you need to learn this stuff.
Well, I'm an anal guy, as most of you know.
And so I started studying that book and learning.
And then I got a reputation of being a pretty good service guy.
We didn't call him technicians back in those days.
You were a mechanic.
Yeah.
Nowadays, everybody's got to have a fancy title.
And not only that, they want a fancy paycheck.
But as it may.
So that's how I got to that.
And then eventually I went into business for myself.
And after my kids were grown, and I says, I don't really want to do this anymore because,
you know, I had already gone through all the colleges and all that sort of stuff for the
kids.
So I started teaching and which was really, I mean, it's hard to believe that go to work
at a certain time in the morning and in the afternoon, you were on a set schedule.
And so and I went to work for Reem at that.
Well, no, I was teaching at Lincoln at that time.
Okay.
And Reem used to do some seminars at our school, use the school's facility, and they would
give the school a piece of training equipment or what have you.
So anyway, so the guy that was doing that training left the company.
And so I called the owner up, the boss, the owner, wasn't the owner.
But anyway, I called him up and said, Hey, what are you going to do for that position?
And he said, he says, Why are you interested?
I said, Yeah, I said, and show you the kind of guy.
So I said, Oh, what is what is your pay for that?
And he gave me a range.
And I said, I would only be interested near the top of that.
Okay, I said, I'm not interested in down down at the bottom of that range.
So he said, Okay, so we interviewed this and the other.
So when he finally made me a job offer, it was $500 less than the top.
So then after Rheem, I went to work for York and then I retired.
And I teach these seminars and I make these videos and I do all these things that, you
know, the industry was good to me.
So it's my payback.
It is.
It's about giving back, isn't it?
It is definitely about paying back.
So if we if we think about giving back to the industry, and the importance of staying
connected in HVAC.
So how would you want to average how many hours a year do you think you participate
in events like this as continuing education?
Well, I teach probably between 15 and 20 seminars, which is one day.
But I spend my wife thinks I live on a computer.
I do these videos and one video would probably take anywhere from 30 to 50 hours to put it
together.
Yeah, sure.
And even though the longest one that I've done is 10 minutes.
Yeah, absolutely.
The people that I train are usually the ones that are in a technical school already like
the Galveston County has a tech school there and they will bring their people up or at
least every class will come up and spend at least all day long.
And I will go ahead and give them all of the updates on the that EPA has on section 608
and then also the A2L refrigerants and then show them the big machinery that we use to
recover the large quantities of refrigerants in the chemical plants and then also show
them the reclamation machines, how they work, and then take them over to the hydrostatic
test station and show them how we re-certify all the cylinders and everything.
And so I spend as much time as I can with them because there's I think four colleges
in the area of Houston that teach air conditioning and so they all call and they want to take
a nice safe visit, get out of the classroom for a few hours and come down and we spend
a lot of time with them.
And then also and always are training the employees that we have.
We just got one new employee that came in and we put him on the OJT and then also if
he works out the first 90 days then I'll pay his tuition, buy his books and everything
else and allow him to go to air conditioning college.
Oh wow, that's fantastic.
Yeah, well one of the things that I've done, I think most people know that at one point
I was on the NAE technical committee and I was on a committee that wrote the journeyman's
and master's test in the state of Maryland.
And now probably my biggest satisfaction is I teach a review course for licensing in Maryland
and the average of people that have not taken my class is about 40% pass.
The ones that take my class it's about 85%.
So that's a great pat on the shoulder for me as far as I'm concerned.
The thing I find most interesting about it is we talk about continuing education and
giving back to the industry and we have a lot of educators that are here for their first
time.
They're new to the program, they're trying to learn what things to expect and one of
the reasons I thought it would be wonderful for us to sit down and talk about the continuing
education side and that this is a constant evolution of learning.
Do Ray and Harvey, do you mind sharing with the audience how old each of you are?
Oh, I'm just a youngster.
I'll be 85 this year.
I'm only 91.
In fact, it was kind of comical.
They were asking me what my three sons are doing and I said, well, the oldest son was
66 and worked for IRS and so he retired about three years ago.
The youngest son retired about two years ago and he's only 62.
And then last year, my middle son that worked with me, he retired and he's only 64.
And here I am only 91 and still enjoying going to the office every day, working four to five
hours a day.
But I've got good management people so that when I'm going up here and my wife and I are
together and so we're enjoying the seminar and I've got good people working for me.
They enjoy the jobs and they're doing a good job for me.
I'll tell you this, from the students that I've had here before previously, it's really
great when they come up and say, hey, I really enjoyed your class this year and I learned
something.
I said, well, you got to come to another one.
And I said, I'm doing it at such and such time.
And they say, I'll be there.
And occasionally one says, well, I won't be there on Wednesday or whatever day.
And it's great.
And you know, everybody likes an attaboy including us old times.
I'll tell you what really has been an enlighten for me.
I've had three employees that went ahead and thought they had found better jobs.
And then after a couple of years would come and say, hey, can I have my old job back?
One of them even took a big pay cut.
He was working for one of the big school districts there and everything else.
And he came back over and he says, I just can't take the politics in the school system.
He says, let me come back to work for you.
And so that's a heartfelt thing for me to have people tell me that, hey, you've been
a big influence on my life and your company has.
And so I've, you know, treat them like family.
That's part of the reason I wanted the two of you to join me is I wanted both of you
to know how much I appreciate your dedication to the industry and to know that you've spent
your entire lives giving back to people way beyond the typical social expectation of when
we work and how long a career is.
Cause a lot of people look at work as I'm going to do this for a certain amount of time
and then I'm going to be done.
But our industry is not really like that.
It's very unique.
And I keep relating this to this, this career.
It's really not about fixing broken things.
It's about serving people.
And when you can help someone understand that they're, they're not just going into a career,
they're going into a lifestyle and a constant evolution of themselves and a never ending
reward.
I don't know that I could ever stop doing this.
Well, I can tell you I've never stopped.
No, I haven't either.
And my one thing in the classes that I do, whether it's a seminar or here for a 45 minute
class or what have you, I honestly believe they've got to be fine.
They do.
They have to be fun.
If they're not fun, the students are going to have to get them involved.
I like two way streets.
I'll ask them questions and I don't care if the answer is right or wrong.
That doesn't matter.
If it's wrong, we're going to tell them.
My usual response is when a guy says it's an answer.
I'll say, I'll say it's a split second, not in say whether it was right or wrong.
And then I'll say wrong.
Give him a little time to think about it.
So, you know, it's that it's got to be fun for them.
It's going to be fun for me when it stops being fun.
I'll probably stop.
I hope that never happens.
I believe that that's the way I am.
I love what I'm doing.
I love the people I work with.
I enjoy meeting our customers.
In fact, here at this seminar, I met several of our customers.
Dyken is one of our larger customers now.
Goodman used to be the customer and then Dyken bought them out.
And so now I'm bringing in the R32 that Dyken has and reclaiming that.
They don't know yet what they're going to do with the reclaimed refrigerator, but I
enjoy talking with them.
Agass is one of our customers.
We do a lot of mutual trading back and forth of refrigerants.
In other words, they'll need something we got.
I'll need something they have.
And so it's a pleasure meeting all these people face to face.
I'm here to tell you, both of you are an inspiration to our industry.
I applaud you and I appreciate you.
I'm so glad that you spent some time with us today.
And I look forward to many opportunities of learning and continuing to see people grow
in this industry.
Definitely my pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you, gentlemen.