Scott McGhee will be the first to admit that he never, in his wildest dreams, figured that he would own a soaring business in his chosen field of HVAC — heating, ventilation and air conditioning — but that’s exactly what he has done, and he gives full credit to his supportive wife and dedicated employees.
McGhee, who has just opened up shop for McGhee’s Heating & Air Conditioning in his new location at the corner of Linco Road and Red Arrow Highway in Stevensville, isn’t done growing yet either. In fact, he’s already drafted the blueprints to more than double the space at his new building which was the long time home to Berrien Cancer Services. 
McGhee currently has 2,160 square feet under roof, but will build an additional 3,000 square feet onto the back of the building to accommodate his sheet metal operations and provide for inside loading of his service vans in a single bay loading dock for year round access.
It’s been a great run since the days when Scott began his avocation while working as a co-op student in high school for Cooper Carlson where his dad was employed. He says, “Don Cooper was looking for help, so I went in and started working then as a grunt, doing whatever needed to be done.” He adds, “One thing led to another and I took another job when I got out of high school.” Perhaps it was just as well, because that was a job in a factory, which he says taught him quickly he didn’t like that work at all, so he ventured back to Cooper and told him he wanted to learn the service angle of the business, “But didn’t want to be somebody’s grunt all day long, so he put me with another guy, Dennis, who owned the business until recently when he sold it.”
McGhee spent that whole summer and part of a winter with that partner, and eventually went to another heating contractor in Niles where he worked for a while, before taking a job at Pepsi doing refrigeration repair. He says, “I enjoyed that, but decided I wanted to get back into the heating and air conditioning business, and worked for yet another company, but that didn’t turn out very well.”
That’s when Scott’s wife, Laura, said “You can do it for other people, why not do it for yourself?” He says, “She’s the one that really pushed me to go into business for myself.”
Scott readily admits, “It was really never intended to get to the level that it has gotten to. I never would have guessed at the rate of success. I just started working out of the house and at the time my dad was working for Oselka Marina in New Buffalo and he asked if I wanted to work on some boating air conditioners, so I found that intriguing, having never done it before, and I did a lot of work in that sector on these big yachts, and really enjoyed that.”
However, as the business grew it was harder to do that and still take care of the demands of a growing enterprise, especially since when people on boats needed air conditioning, so did everybody on land. Scott says, “I began to steer away from that sector, and hired one guy who I’ve known since the beginning, Tristan, and he still works for me today.”
At that point it was just Tristan and Scott, with Tristan doing the oddball things like gas-lines, installs, and Scott doing all of the service work.
With their 20th marriage anniversary approaching and never having taken a true vacation, Laura decided that they needed to take a true escape. Scott says, “Realizing I couldn’t just leave, since I was the one on call all the time and doing pretty much everything seven days a week, even at Christmas, New Years, and whenever, out of the need to take the work whenever he could get it, they realized what they needed was someone to answer the phone and take calls. That way, Tristan could do the service, but Scott didn’t want him to have to answer the phone in the field like he had been doing. So, once again Laura says, “I’ve got this guy, he’s very personable and I’ve known him since he was a little kid, he’s been coming to the office.” Scott says, “That’s how I met Joe Appelget, and as soon as I talked to him, I knew he was the right guy to answer the phones. His personality is just over the top. He’s fantastic. I could not do what he does.” Joe’s been a fixture ever since. That was 12 years ago when the business was really taking flight.
Scott says, “Now I had Tristan and Joe working for me and again, never anticipated it getting any bigger than it was at that time. Yet, we just kept growing and I had a sheet metal room out at my garage and so I added on and built the building next door, got everything moved over there and put the office over there, and we just kept growing.”
One thing led to another and he needed somebody else in the office to help out, so that’s when Scott brought Cheryl on, and the business has added employees one at a time as they grew and needed them ever since.
Again, McGhee admits, “When I started it was never my intention to be anywhere near where we’re at today, by any means,” yet now he has a team of three in the office and seven techs in the field.
McGhee’s specializes in service and replacement of HVAC systems for the light commercial and residential markets. They don’t deal much in new construction work, and only a smattering of the remodeling market from time to time.
McGhee has grown his team by teaching them and sending them to highly specialized training. He says, “It’s hard to find people that are as multi-faceted as we need, so three of the people I have brought in didn’t know anything but we trained them, sent them to school, and two have been sent to a specialty school down in Arkansas for two weeks at a time. Another was sent to a sheet metal class down south for a week. They’ve become top notch employees.”
They do sheet metal work for ventilation duct replacements.
Speaking frankly, Scott McGhee will tell you, “We’re probably not the cheapest company around by any means, but we continually reinvest in our employees and, in fact, they may well be the highest paid employees in our field in this region.” He goes on, “The goal is to be the best, not necessarily the cheapest. I don’t want my employees to be paid so cheaply that they are deprived of things for their own families, I pay them fairly so they can better their own lives.”
The new office on Red Arrow Highway is open from 8am to 4:30pm Monday through Friday, but are also on call for 24/7 service, and the team is expected to call back within the hour if they get the call. They us a live answering service that answers the phone and dispatches to whoever is on call at that moment through page, email and/or text message to respond.
Interestingly, Scott says, “More than half of our clientele are second home owners and frankly, many of them we rarely see, but when they contact us through email or through a property manager, we get the key or the alarm code and go do the job. We’ve built a tremendous amount of trust over the years in the community.”
Addressing that trust, Scott says, “It’s very humbling to gain that level of trust and maintain it. Companies with generic names can often hide behind that name whatever business they are in, but when your name is on the door, on the business, on the side of the truck, you need to maintain top flight service. I grew up here, live here, work and go to church here, and my kids go to school around here, so we work hard to keep that trust. We have regular meetings with the full team and remind everyone of the trust we’ve earned and how to maintain it, and never take advantage of anybody.”
Mrs. McGhee — Laura — is a dental hygienist at CARE Dentistry, and Scott gives her all of the credit, saying, “She’s the one that prods and pokes and keeps us on target all the time.”
Cheryl Schoenback and Joe Appelget are on the office staff with him at 7301 Red Arrow Highway in Stevensville, and they can be reached by phone at 269-466-0123.
The McGhee’s Heating & Air Conditioning CARE Club is a unique part of the business offering Comfort, Assurance, Reliability, and Efficiency through annual service and maintenance plans.
They currently have a $50 mail in rebate program through Efficiency United for tune ups for Michigan Gas Utilities customers, in which customers pay for the tuneup and mail in the rebate form to get $50 back through natural gas companies.
Scott continues to give back to the community regularly. He teamed up with Y-Country Radio this week to give away a furnace for the holiday season to someone in need, but was so overwhelmed by the need exhibited, he ended up doubling that offer and has given away two furnaces to those in need. That’s just the kind of guy he is.
