I own Accutemp Services, a commercial HVAC and refrigeration shop in Loveland. I have spent more than a decade hiring techs, training apprentices, and watching people build real careers in this trade. So when someone asks me whether HVAC is a good career, I do not have to guess. I have watched it happen, over and over, right here in Northern Colorado.
This post is my honest case for the trade. Not a recruiting pitch, just what I have seen from the owner's chair. If it lands with you, we are usually looking for good people, and you can see what is open on our careers page.
The Trades Are Short on People
Every shop owner I know in Colorado has the same problem. We have more work than techs. Restaurants, breweries, grocery stores, and office buildings all run on heating, cooling, and refrigeration equipment, and that equipment breaks. When it breaks, someone with real skills has to show up and fix it. There are not enough of those someones.
A big wave of experienced techs is retiring, and fewer young people entered the trades over the last twenty years. That math is simple. If you come into this field now and take it seriously, you will not spend your career worrying about layoffs or wondering if a computer will replace you. Nobody has figured out how to fix a rooftop unit over the internet.
No College Debt Required
Here is the part that I think matters most for someone who is 18 to 25 and deciding what to do. You do not need a four year degree to do this work. You can start as an apprentice, earn a paycheck from day one, and learn the trade on the job. Trade school or a community college HVAC program helps and can speed things up, but it costs a fraction of a university degree.
Compare the two paths. One person spends four years paying tuition and comes out owing money. The other spends those same four years earning, learning, and getting certifications like EPA 608. By year four, the apprentice is a working tech with zero debt and real skills that follow them anywhere. I know which side of that trade I would take.
What HVAC Techs Actually Earn in Colorado
I will keep this honest and conservative, because inflated numbers help nobody. Based on what I see in our market, a green apprentice in Northern Colorado typically starts somewhere in the high teens to low twenties per hour. A competent service tech with a few years of experience and the right certifications generally lands in the high twenties to low forties per hour, depending on skill and specialty.
Experienced commercial techs who can run refrigeration calls on their own are worth more, and shops pay for it. Add overtime and emergency call rotation, which is common in commercial service, and a senior tech can build a solid middle class income and beyond. These are ranges, not promises, and every shop pays differently. But the trajectory is real: your pay tracks your skills, and your skills compound every year you stay in the trade.
Commercial vs Residential: Why It Matters
Not all HVAC work is the same. Residential techs work in houses: furnaces, home AC units, lots of similar calls. Commercial techs work in businesses, and that is a different world. At Accutemp we are commercial only. Our techs work on rooftop units above restaurants, walk-in coolers behind grocery stores, glycol systems in breweries, and the kitchen equipment that keeps a restaurant open for lunch.
Commercial work tends to be more technical and more varied. A commercial HVAC call might be a 25 ton rooftop unit with a bad compressor. The next call might be refrigeration in a brewery or a prep table in a commercial kitchen. You are solving harder puzzles, and harder puzzles build more valuable skills. That is also why commercial experience tends to command better pay over a career.
What a Day Actually Looks Like
People imagine trades work as grinding and repetitive. Commercial service is the opposite. A typical day for one of our techs looks something like this:
- Check the schedule and load the van with the parts the day's calls will need
- First call: a restaurant's AC quit overnight. Diagnose, quote it, fix it, get them cooling before the lunch rush
- Second call: preventive maintenance on a grocery store's refrigeration rack
- Afternoon: a brewery's glycol chiller is running warm. Troubleshoot, find the failing part, repair or order
- Wrap up notes and photos on each job so the office and the customer both know what happened
Every building is different. Every failure is different. You are outside on rooftops on sunny days, inside walk-in coolers in July, and talking with real business owners who are genuinely glad to see you. If you like solving problems with your hands and your head at the same time, it does not get much better.
The Growth Path
This trade has a ladder, and the rungs are clear:
- Apprentice: ride along, learn tools, learn safety, get your EPA 608 certification
- Journeyman tech: run your own calls, diagnose and repair independently
- Lead tech: handle the hardest jobs, mentor apprentices, be the one others call for help
- Service manager: run dispatch, scheduling, and the whole service operation
Some techs go further and open their own shops. That is how most HVAC companies in this state started, including plenty run by people who began as apprentices with no money and no degree. The ceiling in this trade is set by your ambition, not by a piece of paper.
The Front Range Keeps Growing
Location matters, and Northern Colorado is one of the best places in the country to be in this trade. Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, and the whole corridor down to Denver keep adding restaurants, breweries, grocery stores, warehouses, and offices. Every one of those buildings needs heating, cooling, and refrigeration for its entire life. Growth like that is a tailwind that lasts decades.
If any of this sounds like you, come talk to us. We are a small shop that develops people on purpose, and we hire for attitude and work ethic first. Check the open roles on our careers page, or just send me an email. I read every application myself.