The furnace showed up on a porch in Lincoln in the dead of winter, and the man carrying it in wasn't the general manager. He wasn't even a manager.
He was a technician who'd given up his own commission for the week to be there.
Jordan Cartwright, General Manager of John Henry's Plumbing, Heating, Air & Electrical, could show up for the cameras every time his company gives away a free furnace. He doesn't.
"I don't want to be involved in that," Cartwright said. "I want my guys that are actually out turning the wrench doing that for those people to get the pride and the joy of taking that. That's a win for them."
Technicians at John Henry's earn a big chunk of their pay through incentives, so volunteering for the giveaway means leaving some of that money on the table. Cartwright doesn't dress it up.
"They're sacrificing that to be able to help the community," he said.
A comfort advisor rides along to walk each family through warranties, rebates and thermostat settings. Then the crew steps back and lets it be what it is.
Finding the family who needs it most
John Henry's calls the program Free Furnace Frenzy. Every year, it opens nominations for local first responders and reads through the stories that come in, looking for a household where the system is truly done.
"It's not just about the age of the system; it's about efficiency, whether the system can keep up with demand, and whether it's truly at the end of its life," Cartwright said. "We want to make sure it's a system that genuinely needs replacing."
The first responders who don't win still hear back. John Henry's follows up with discounted service, whatever it takes to get them through winter and into summer.
"Typically those first responders are people that live inside of our community and are also giving back to the community," Cartwright said. "It's just a way for us to give back and thank them for their help."
From framing trim to running the whole shop
Cartwright didn't plan on the trades. Out of high school, he was studying information technology, chasing a career building data centers. A job in fire-and-water restoration put a hammer in his hand instead, and he learned to frame, hang drywall, paint and finish trim.
That work led him to John Henry's — a company he'd known since he was 10 or 12 years old, back when the owner was already a familiar name around town.
He came on to build a plumbing construction division. It did about $500,000 in revenue his first year. Two years later, it was doing $3.5 million.
From there, he took over plumbing operations, then the trades and logistics, then the general manager's chair, where he now runs a team of about 160 people.
Ask him what actually gets him out of bed, and he skips right past the revenue.
"When somebody asks what your why is, it's the people," Cartwright said. "I get my enjoyment out of helping somebody solve a problem that they are potentially not capable of on their own. Whether it's helping a call center representative, or a dispatcher, or a plumbing service tech, having that comfort level that they all know they can reach out to me, and I'm going to help them figure out their problem, is why I do what I do every day."
The giving doesn't come from a memo
Underneath the furnace program sits something John Henry's calls its culture committee — about 12 employees pulled from every level of the business, field techs sitting next to senior leadership. Membership turns over each year based on nominations, and joining is voluntary. That word matters to Cartwright.
"That's how you get the buy-in," he said. "Most of these people are committing to the community because they're out in it, forward-facing. We don't want it to be a handed-down directive that, hey, this is something John Henry's does, you have to be part of it."
The committee meets twice a month, working from an annual budget split roughly evenly between internal team events and outside community work. Some months it's water for the People's City Mission. Other months it's socks and stocking caps in the winter, or a Saturday spent at a Humane Society event. Every idea goes back to the full company for a vote before anyone lifts a finger.
Grown up alongside the city
John Henry's turns 30 this September, and Cartwright talks about the company and Lincoln almost like they came up together.
"There's always been some community involvement presence," he said of the early years. "As we've matured as a business, it's allowed us to become more and more involved, larger staffing, better funding to help support and give back. So we have grown alongside the community."
The name recognition runs deep enough that it's become a running joke inside the company.
"Pretty much everybody inside the community of Lincoln knows 100% who John Henry's is, what it is, they know the jingle," Cartwright said, laughing. "There isn't a person that can't barely sing it in this community."
Crews hear it playing at the supply house counter. It runs on Lincoln radio all day long. And it's backed by a set of values every employee can recite — JOHN, short for Just be passionate, Opportunity through teamwork, Honesty and integrity, and Next-level innovation.
"All of our employees across the company know our core values and what we live by," Cartwright said. "That is the core of who we are and what we do."
What made room for all of this
None of this happens if the back office is buried.
John Henry's went live on ServiceTitan in 2018, replacing what Cartwright calls "a glorified spreadsheet." Real-time reporting changed what the business could see about itself day to day.
"The technology and the support and what it gives you to run the business in real time is bananas," he said. By his estimate, it's cut the need for back-office seats by 30% to 40%.
He draws a straight line from that to everything else the company does in the community.
"Before you have the tools to literally run your business, the amount of spreadsheets and the different ways you have to pull the data was so time-consuming," he said. "It didn't allow the ability for a service manager to get out into the field, be with his employees, and be customer-facing to support the community."
When AI-powered dispatch tools first showed up, the fear inside the building was real, not theoretical.
"We had every dispatcher thinking, oh man, we're going to lose our jobs," Cartwright said.
They didn't. John Henry's runs the same number of dispatchers today as it did before.
"You're always going to need the human element," he said. "Emotion is real. Empathy is real." In his shop, AI just picks up the overflow call so a customer's phone doesn't ring and ring and ring with no one on the other end.
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A unique breed
Ask Cartwright what people get wrong about the people who do this work, and he talks about character before he talks about skill.
"Tradespeople as a whole, we're a unique breed," he said. "Fixers at the heart, and operators at the heart, which gives people the ability to treat every home like it's their mother's home, their grandmother's home. It doesn't matter the age of something; somebody's craftsmanship wants them to dig in and fix it and just take care of that customer."
You can see it in a warm house in Lincoln in January. And you can see it in a technician who gave up his own commission for the week, just to be the one standing on the porch when the door opened.
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