Many more kids should look at trades. The cost of college now really has to be looked at for the degree one gets and risk of going deeply in debt paying for the education. One has to gauge if it is worth it. It's goteen to that point. The typical debt ratio for college is awful for most. Getting a plumber or HVAC person in a matter of a few days is now virtually impossible. If the contractor is good & honest, this demand only drives up $$$$$.
The value of their service is all on the kind of person they are and work ethic they have and if good. They can control all of that which is a good deal.
I am now self-employed starting a small business and I absolutely luv it. Should have done it years ago. I control all my QC, and everything. No more wasting time at all the meetings just to fulfill a quota or wasting time doing training for HR requirements. Just have to save for taxes.
He's doing industrial HVAC stuff on the service side no new construction, etc. Manufacturing plants, churches, schools, hospitals, big buildings. They go somewhere different every day within about an 80 mile radius. Like if a middle school or hospital or whatever calls and says something isn't working he and a journeyman he's paired up with drive there to figure it out and fix it. Yesterday they were working on the roof of one of USD's buildings in Vermillion, and the day before that they were at a manufacturing plant in Cherokee.
He went that route rather than residential because he said he didn't want to be crawling around in people's attics or basements trying to fix and figure out something that a hack job did 50 years ago, and always having people want something done right but cheap. I get it. If you tell someone living pay check to paycheck that their furnace is shot the first reaction is, "How can you cobble it together as cheap as possible?" I've also seen how some people live and there are some nasty, dirty, cat piss-smelling homes out there.
He has his apprenticeship classes a few nights a week right there at his employer's main office and in 3 years he'll have the same licensing as a kid taking HVAC at a community college, plus it's 100% paid for, plus he'll have 3 years OTJ experience. It's a year longer than the CC route, but I guarantee he's getting better experience while he's working and he'll be farther along than a college kid in year 3.
In the next 40 years at least there's never going to not be a need for people to fix that shit. Might be robots in 50 years to do it, but not while he's working age. I'm happy for him and jealous at the same time
Really wish I had gone that route myself out of high school. Instead I got a business degree that cost me many thousands of dollars and I work indoors on spreadsheets all day because I thought that's what you did after high school.
