OCTOBER 2025 SMALL BUSINESS OF THE MONTH: CAMFLO HEATING & COOLING

When temperatures plunged below zero during a 2022 Christmastime cold snap, phones at Camflo Heating & Cooling didn’t stop ringing. Homeowners across north-central Indiana woke to furnaces that wouldn’t start and a cold that crept in hour by hour.

Inside the HVAC company’s headquarters in Flora, the Camflo team worked through the holiday, fielding calls, reassuring anxious customers and dispatching trucks to restore heat to more than 50 households.

“It was hard, and it was long. But we were able to help a lot of people, and it was rewarding,” said Trevor, who co-owns Camflo alongside his father, Titus Hess and business partner, Jason Filbrun.

Founded in 2009, Camflo’s 35-person team provides heating and cooling products and services to residential and commercial customers in Carroll, Cass, Clinton, Howard, Tippecanoe and White counties.

It’s a small company operating in a trade confronting a thorny truth: demand is strong, talent is scarce and as a thicket of federal regulations make the work more complex, companies that train, win.

While many competitors are selling out or scaling up, Trevor, Titus and Jason are betting on a slower, intentional approach to growing their business, one rooted in craftsmanship, training and community ties.

From apprentice to journeyman

Rather than wait for skilled workers to appear, Camflo responded to the labor shortage gripping HVAC companies nationwide by hiring rookies and teaching them the trade.

The company launched a state-accredited apprenticeship program that gives trainees a paid path to a journeyman’s license. Nearly a quarter of Camflo’s field staff began in the program, riding alongside seasoned technicians who once stood where they are now.

“We invest heavily in our employees through training,” Trevor said. “My dad leads that program and is passionate about developing new technicians.”

It’s an investment that pays dividends in an industry that will need tens of thousands of new workers in the coming years to replace those leaving the field for retirement or other professions, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Camflo’s in-house four-year curriculum, which blends classroom instruction with fieldwork and includes all required certifications, is producing a new generation of experts. It boasts a 90 percent retention rate and recently earned “Apprenticeship Program of the Year” from Interplay Learning, an Austin-based career-development platform for the trades.

A measured move toward Lafayette

When you speak with Trevor about his business, the emphasis is never on rapid expansion or disruption. It’s about craft.

“We’ve worked hard to build a reputation not only for quality workmanship but also for genuinely caring about people — our customers and our team members alike,” he says.

That reputation shows up online as much as by word of mouth. Camflo holds an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and has earned over 750 five-star Google reviews.

The company’s name — a portmanteau of Camden and Flora — reflects its small-town roots. But Lafayette, located just 25 miles east of Flora, has become Camflo’s largest market and the site of its next expansion.

Many of the business’s technicians live in Lafayette and have been working in its neighborhoods for years. The new satellite office, planned for next year, will give Camflo a physical footprint in the region’s most populous city.

“We’re committed to growing slowly and intentionally. Before we grow the company, we want to make sure our foundation stays strong and that we remain true to our core values.”

Lafayette’s expanding economy, driven by Purdue University and a cluster of regional employers like Caterpillar and Subaru of Indiana Automotive, offers fertile ground for Camflo’s brand of personal service.

“We love Lafayette because it’s a vibrant, growing community. Being a college town, Purdue brings in a lot of people who value quality work,” Trevor said.

Camflo’s growth has run parallel to its sense of place. The same towns where the company installs and repairs HVAC units are the ones where it shows up to lend a hand.

Measuring success in people, not profit

Each spring and fall, Camflo gives away a free furnace or cooling system to a community member in need, chose from public nominations.

This spring’s winner — a Carroll County woman dealing with health challenges — received a free air-conditioning installation in May. Nominations for the fall furnace giveaway are open through October 31, with installation scheduled for November, just as Indiana’s temperatures begin to drop. In small towns, gestures like that carry weight.

The company also regularly donates equipment and labor for community projects, most recently, a home built by Habitat for Humanity in Kokomo designed for a resident who was born with no limbs.

Camflo’s name turns up in other ways too: on youth-league scoreboards, at community festivals and along parade routes.

“It’s a great feeling to give back in ways like that,” Trevor said.

Most mornings, Camflo’s technicians load their trucks before daylight and set out across Tippecanoe County, to a farmhouse in Shadeland, a subdivision in West Lafayette or an aging system in a Brookston church basement.

The day unfolds in familiar order: a knock at the door, the hum of tools, the satisfaction of something working again.

Ask him, and that’s what Trevor will tell you success looks like; he doesn’t mention revenue or market share.

For him, the work has always been about steadiness. Running a service company, he said, means navigating both the literal and figurative temperature swings of the job. He thinks about leadership the way many think about craftsmanship: something you never stop refining.

“I don’t believe you ever ‘arrive’ as a leader,” Trevor said. “It’s a continual process of growth and stretching yourself. Somedays, you feel like you’re on cloud nine, and the next day you’re in the valley. The challenge is to stay grounded and stable, even when you’re having a hard day.”