Chase Choate

Chase Choate will be the first to tell you that his career path has taken some unexpected turns. Yet somehow, he finds he’s where he should be, doing what he should be doing. Each day, Choate spends time helping people he likes to call “salt-of-the-earth” types — commercial HVAC contractors and technicians.

As a history and economics student at the University of Florida, Choate had every intention of going to law school. By the time he graduated, he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about depositions, legal briefs and oral arguments. Instead, he became a teacher — illuminating the minds of high school seniors about the intricacies of government and economics. “I got to share my passion and talk a lot about both topics — even though it was to a captive audience,” he jokes.

Just as he was about to start his third year teaching, an opportunity to become a Tampa-based sales engineer for a large commercial HVAC company changed his career trajectory. After accepting the position in 2017, Choate found the HVAC industry suited him. “It allowed me to tap into my creative side,” he adds. “I found that each project presents its own kind of puzzle. When you configure a system solution for customers, you have to select equipment that best serves their needs, while factoring in technical, financial, lifespan and performance criteria. A lot of times, there is more than one way to solve the puzzle — and that requires creative problem solving.”

Although he valued his time as a sales engineer, Choate made another career tweak a few years later. “I wanted to stay in sales because I enjoy the HVAC industry and the people I come in contact with, so I jumped to the parts side of the business.”

The parts side serves up an equally challenging puzzle of a different sort.

“Balancing your parts inventory is critical for excellent customer service,” he notes. “It involves accounting for parts in stock at the warehouse and out in the field, but also properly forecasting what our sales engineers and contractors may need — which isn’t always obvious. Being able to fit all those pieces together helps us alleviate a major pain point for our customers so we have their systems up and running as soon as possible.”

Under Choate’s guidance, that sense of urgency is spurring strategic growth in the company’s parts division. Currently, Integrated Cooling Solutions has a large parts warehouse in Tampa, with smaller parts facilities in Orlando, Rockledge, and Plant City. A larger parts store is slated to open in Jacksonville in 2025.

“Many HVAC manufacturers are located in the Northeast, Midwest, and West — so the lead times for parts can be anywhere from three to five days, sometimes longer if we don’t have the part in stock,” Choate says. “If we do have it in stock, we can deliver the part in 24 hours, and even the same day in some cases. That speed of delivery is the reason we’re adding strategic distribution centers across Florida, and stocking them with a greater depth and variety of parts. Shaving off precious hours and days is paramount to getting contractors and end-users back up and running.”

The effort to serve ICS customers in the best possible way is right in step with Choate’s personal mantra: Get the job done right and do it as quickly as possible.

 

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