McElroy’s: Generational Growth & Innovation Fuels 70 Years of Business — TK Business Magazine
Vice President Residential HVAC McElroy’s
Not far removed from celebrating 38 years at the company, Greg Hunsicker, vice president of residential HVAC, reflects on McElroy’s past with pride, and yet can’t help but envision its future as even brighter than the good old days he experienced firsthand.
Hunsicker joined the company as a field helper but at the time was likely most well known as then- company president Jerry McElroy’s nephew and company founder Homer McElroy’s grandson.
“I started out as a helper doing tear out of heating and cooling systems on buildings we were renovating,” reminisced Hunsicker. “I actually did a lot of the demolition side of it, out in the trenches, getting dirty on my hands and knees. Being a family member, you don’t get the respect unless the workers actually see you out there doing the work.”
After many years of paying his dues and learning the business, Hunsicker worked his way up through the ranks to now manage McElroy’s residential division, which consists of heating and air conditioning, new installation, and service and repair.
“That is what is near and dear to me here,” Hunsicker said of his division. “We provide the repair of homes’ heating and cooling systems. We’re talking gas services and heat pumps, hot water and steam boiler systems, humidification and dehumidification, air cleaning, and everything to do with indoor environment comfort and the quality of the air within the structure.”
Hunsicker is emphatic in his belief that quality work and quality products are irreplaceable.
However, as far as Hunsicker is concerned, quality isn’t limited to the products or labor. Customer service, in particular the ability to educate customers and enlighten them with industry knowledge, is a key element of providing a holistic quality solution.
“Our customers look to us for advice on what is available,” Hunsicker said. “We educate them on the quality and operating differences. We are always going to promote the product we know will get the best results because then our customers will go and promote our company to their friends and family.”
Tantamount with his commitment to customer satisfaction is Hunsicker’s dedication to his staff, their well-being and their growth. He has found that McElroy’s is uniquely positioned to provide great opportunity and flexibility to its staff because of its size and complementary commercial and residential divisions.
“There might be times when one department is slow and another has plenty of work and we can move people around instead of having people out of work or waiting around,” Hunsicker explained. “Our business operates in cycles and a lot of it is weather dependent. When it’s really hot or really cold is when our business is the busiest.”
Taking a step back, Hunsicker is able to see the long-range, positive impact such a focus on team member success can have.
“In our 70 years of business, we’ve had over 25 employees who have retired from this company with over 25 years of continuous employment. We continue to be a company where employees want to spend their entire career. Our success is just not our customers but it’s our employees who are great craftsmen and love what they do,” he said.
And as it relates to the overall company prosperity, Hunsicker points to strong leadership and family values.
“I’d attribute our company’s success to three generations of great leadership. From May of 1951 to present, we’ve had Homer McElroy, the founder, and then Jerry McElroy, Homer’s son and my uncle, and now Dan Beal running the company. We also have a fourth generation coming up in the business at this time with Dan’s son, my son and my nephew learning the business.”
DAN BEAL
President McElroy’s
Born and raised in Topeka, Dan Beal started working at his father-in-law’s business in 1991 following his graduation from college.
“I was an engineer from KU, so I started out in engineering and project management,” said Beal, recalling his start in the business. “When I got out of school, I went out on the job sites and worked with welders and sheet metal workers and technicians. It was invaluable to learn the trade from the ground up out on the job
sites. I then moved into the office and did engineering work and project management work and started dealing with other owners and architects across town. Then about 15 years ago, I became the third-generation president of the company.”
As the president of the company, Beal’s attention is often dedicated to improving processes, assessing technology and market trends, and shoring up the company’s future. Over the past year in particular, Beal focused on improving processes and keeping people safe while simultaneously ensuring the company’s essential services always remained available to the community.
As communities and economies begin to recover post pandemic, Beal’s mind remains on the future, albeit one that is now perhaps more uncertain.
Beal sees innovative product offerings such as the new UV light bacterial control systems as a mission-critical step in adapting to the ever-evolving needs of the market.
“Our industry is constantly changing and innovating, and we want to stay at the forefront of innovation so we can explain these things to our customers,” Beal said.
The key to adaptation, Beal says, is listening to what their clients need. At the same time, he’s well aware that there are larger societal changes in progress, and if the company is to remain an effective solution provider, it must get ahead of those changes.
The first way to stay a step ahead is with processes.
“Technology is driving our world and our business,” Beal said. “We’re dealing with a retiring workforce and not a lot of the younger generation coming into that workforce, so we have to do the same amount of work with less people. The way we do that is with technology—computer modeling and prefabrication of our systems.”
The second adaptation comes on the customer side.
“Customers are used to communicating through what I’ll call the ‘Amazon model.’ They not only want to talk to you, but they want notifications on whatever device they’re carrying,” Beal said. “Being flexible in communicating with our clients is vital.”
WADE JUENEMAN
Vice President McElroy’s
For Wade Jueneman, the ability to tackle a new problem quickly is perhaps the most critical component to what his team provides. When a client has invested millions or tens of millions of dollars into a structure, the only way that client can begin recouping their investment is by opening the building for business, and that can’t happen until his team completes its work. Time is money, and Jueneman—a former project manager turned VP—understands that better than most.
As McElroy’s Vice President of Engineering, Jueneman oversees commercial and industrial construction, a team of project managers and the company’s estimators. With such a skilled and diverse team under his leadership, Jueneman often finds himself working on complex and high- profile projects, the Cyrus Hotel and the USD 497 schools being two of the more recent jobs.
Jueneman’s domain of expertise encompasses mechanical systems, HVAC, sanitary systems, water, refrigerant and piping, and domestic plumbing—all for commercial or industrial buildings. But to ensure quality results today, Jueneman must always keep one eye on tomorrow. To that end, he’s embraced innovation as a key pillar of his role.
“With COVID and our environment now, we are offering bacterial control devices, one of them being ultraviolet light,” Jueneman said of a trending product he was largely responsible for championing at McElroy’s. “If a system is designed with the right ultraviolet ray of light, it’s very effective at killing bacteria quickly. You can put them in an apartment unit all the way up to a large institutional building.”
In addition to bacterial control devices, Jueneman is also seeing growing demand for ductless air systems, or variable refrigerant flow systems, as they’re known in the industry. Such units are better equipped at cooling or heating only the rooms that need it, as opposed to an all-or-nothing approach that a conventional HVAC system provides. But new technology and gadgets aside, Jueneman holds firm in his belief that the fundamentals make the difference.
“Being able to do things quickly—get on them quickly and turn them around quickly—is so important. From my standpoint, that is what we focus on. We learn a lot every day, just by being in the industry, about what does and doesn’t work, what requires a lot of maintenance versus what requires less maintenance,” he said. “Between that and having a staff of engineers, McElroy’s is a viable option for clients looking for a turnkey solution.”