Last Thanksgiving, Mallory Merritt drove to a family's house with a full holiday meal in the back of her car. And news they hadn't seen coming: a $1,500 gift, just because someone in the community had thought of them.
"It was a really awesome experience to be able to do," said Merritt, sales manager at Ultimate Heating Air & Plumbing in Meridian, Idaho. "I first-hand got to hand it over to a family that obviously needed the help."
For Ultimate, that's not a special occasion. The company started as a mom-and-pop shop in Kuna more than 26 years ago. Today it's 54 people who still call each other, and their customers, family.
Trades run in the family
Merritt didn't plan on working in the trades. She spent 10 years in childcare before joining Ultimate almost three years ago as an install coordinator, the same year the company adopted ServiceTitan. But the trades were already in her blood.
"I actually got into trades because my mom worked for Ultimate prior to me working here, and she retired from here," Merritt said. "My dad was an electrician, my brother works on industrial boilers. It just happened to run in the family, so here I am today."
Ultimate's own story runs similarly steady. It started in Kuna with one install crew, one service manager, and a single person answering phones. The original owners ran it for 20 years before selling to a private equity group about five years ago so they could retire and move closer to family.
Headcount has grown from about a dozen employees to 54 today, including a six-person call center that started as a single phone line. Ultimate is now part of Redwood, a group of home service companies that pool resources and expertise.
"So many of us have been here together for so long, we've just grown together," Merritt said. "We've been here since we were small, and now to watch us grow and change has only brought us together."
A standard, not a slogan
Ultimate's tagline, "Service at a Higher Level," shows up on trucks, uniforms, and a company jingle Merritt says customers still sing back to employees on site. To her, it's not a phrase the marketing team came up with. It's how the job gets done.
"To us, it's pretty much doing things the right way the first time," Merritt said. "We want to make sure our communication throughout our departments is great, we're honest, and we're always going to stand behind our work. We treat our customers like family."
Some customers have been with Ultimate since 2000. Long enough that they still ask for staff who retired years ago.
"They'll be like, 'Oh, is Brenda still there?' And I'm like, 'Oh, she retired five years ago,'" Merritt said. "It's awesome to be able to have our customers think of us as their neighbor. We're going to be there until the job is done right, and if it's not, we're going to be there until it is."
Showing up around the valley
Ultimate's community involvement started small. When a sister company under Redwood ran a Thanksgiving meal giveaway for its own members, the Ultimate team saw a chance to do more.
"We have so many families in need," Merritt said. "We were like, well, let's do something bigger."
The team asked the community to nominate families, delivered full Thanksgiving meals, and handed out $500 gift cards, with one family getting $1,500. Ultimate runs a version of the giveaway at Christmas too, raffling off a furnace and air conditioner to a family in need.
This year, Ultimate became the lead sponsor of the Boise Music Festival, a one-day event that draws about 40,000 people and is the largest of its kind in Idaho. The previous headline sponsor had stepped back after more than a decade with the festival, and Ultimate took the spot.
"It's a huge event," Merritt said. "We did a system giveaway there, sold memberships, and got our name out there." Her daughter, a fan of the festival's headlining DJ, got to meet him backstage. "She was very excited."
The company also sponsors youth sports teams its own employees' kids play on. A call center employee's son plays football. The CFO's son plays baseball. Merritt's daughter plays softball. Ultimate donates to local animal shelters, staffs a booth at Kuna Days, and recently ran a youth job fair with its in-house recruiter in the town where it all started.
"We just like to keep it very family-oriented," Merritt said.
Building techs from scratch
Supporting the Treasure Valley also means making sure there are enough skilled people around to keep serving it. Like most of the trades, Ultimate feels the labor shortage directly.
"There is a shortage, and we definitely feel it," Merritt said.
So the company built its own pipeline. It hires technicians with no experience, pairs them with a trainer immediately, and pays for their schooling through the College of Western Idaho to become licensed journeymen. The apprenticeship program is about a year and a half old and has grown from a handful of participants to five or six this year.
Ron, Ultimate's longtime service manager, tried to retire this spring. He couldn't stay away. He's now a field supervisor spending his days on ride-alongs and hands-on training with new technicians.
"Ron is spawning more Rons in the field," Merritt said.
Merritt's own path is the kind of story Ultimate points to when it recruits. She went from install coordinator to sales manager in three years. Ultimate's call center manager started as a customer service rep at 21 and has run the department for a year and a half. One recent installer, new to HVAC, is now one of Merritt's top salespeople.
"There's always room for growth, and the trades are always going to be around," Merritt said. "Someone's always going to need their HVAC fixed or their plumbing fixed. There's so much opportunity, whether it's management, the call center, marketing, or the field."
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Tech that clears room to give back
Ultimate runs on ServiceTitan, and its technicians regularly use Atlas, ServiceTitan's trades-native AI agent, to review sales calls and get coaching in the field.
"Our technicians love it, because they can ask it questions," Merritt said. "If they're listening back to their calls, they can ask, 'What could I have done differently to close this?' It takes so much off my plate."
When Ultimate rolled out its dispatch automation tools, it started with a small group of maintenance technicians rather than the whole team.
"Start small, don't get overwhelmed," Merritt said, offering advice to other owners considering AI tools. "Do what you can in little pieces, but definitely slowly start bringing it in, because it's not going to replace anybody. It's going to make your existing jobs so much easier."
Ultimate saw more revenue, better conversion, and less drive time from the initial rollout, then expanded the tool to the full service team.
"We really believe in our company, and how long we've been around, and we really believe in family, and being your neighbor," Merritt said. "We're going to back everything we do. That is why we have Service at a Higher Level."
Want to learn more about ServiceTitan's Power the Nation initiative and the contractors making a difference across the country? Visit ServiceTitan's Power the Nation home page.
