For many HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, the person who founded the business is still the one running it, and the question of who takes over next is getting harder to put off.
Gallup’s Pathways to Wealth survey found that more than half of U.S. owners of businesses with employees are 55 or older. A 2025 U.S. Bank survey of 1,000 small-business owners found that 62% have seen their retirement timelines speed up over the past five years, while only 54% have a formal succession plan and 62% said the process feels overwhelming. In a trade business, where much of the company’s value sits in the owner’s relationships and experience, going without a plan puts employees, customers, and the owner’s own family in a tough spot.
Why is trade business succession harder in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana?
For a retiring HVAC owner, the customer list and the trucks are the easy part to hand off. The harder part is everything they know from decades of diagnosing systems, pricing jobs, and deciding which technician to send to which house. If that knowledge has only ever lived in the owner’s head, the company can be profitable and well-liked and still be hard to transfer.
Family succession isn’t a given, either. An owner’s kids may have built careers elsewhere, and the service manager who would make a great owner may not have the capital or financial background to buy the company outright. That can leave owners talking to outside buyers before they’ve decided what they want their own role, or their company, to look like after the sale.
Workforce pipeline challenges in the Ohio River Valley
Ownership is only half of the problem because a business is only as transferable as the team running it, and the trades are short on people. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 40,600 openings a year for HVAC technicians, 42,000 for plumbers, and 72,700 for electricians through 2035, and it says many of those openings will come from replacing workers who retire or leave the field. Many of those experienced technicians are aging out alongside the owners they’ve worked for.
Kentucky and Indiana are putting real effort into the pipeline. According to the Kentucky Workforce Innovation Board, Kentucky’s Registered Apprenticeship enrollment has grown 39% since 2021, compared with 22% nationally, and apprentices there start at an average of $18.02 an hour and finish at $30.70. Indiana’s Office of Work-Based Learning and Apprenticeship reports more than 86,500 apprentices trained in the state since 2014. Great Oaks in Greater Cincinnati, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, and Ivy Tech in Indiana are all training the technicians these companies will need, giving owners a local place to start building their next generation of talent.
The opportunity for the next generation of Midwest trade leaders
After years in the home services industry, I know this transition is one of the biggest opportunities home services has had in a long time. The same U.S. Bank survey found that 36% of Gen Z and millennial owners plan to buy a business from a retiring owner, so there are younger operators who would rather take over a well-established company than build one from scratch.
In many businesses, some of the next generation of plumbing and HVAC leadership may already be on the payroll. It could be the lead tech who trains new hires, the service manager who fixes scheduling problems before the owner hears about them, or the office manager who knows long-time customers by name. With the right setup, whether that’s a gradual ownership stake, a partner who brings capital and back-office support, or a real leadership development plan, those people can run the company and keep it local.
If you’re an owner, start this conversation years before you plan to step away. Write down how decisions get made, give your emerging leaders real authority while you’re still around to coach them, and decide whether you want a clean exit or a partner who will keep the culture you built. Owners who plan ahead also seem to be doing better in the meantime: U.S. Bank found that 64% of owners with a succession plan reported significant growth over the past year, compared with 50% of those without one.
Given those numbers, many HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana are likely to change hands in the coming years. How that goes for the people who work there and the customers who rely on them will depend on how early owners start planning and how seriously they invest in the people coming up behind them.
If you’re a trade business owner starting to think about succession, or a next-generation leader looking for a path to ownership, I’d welcome the conversation. Reach out at https://g5ventures.com/contact/.