This week we celebrated the life of our service manager at work, William Coles. William died unexpectedly last week. He had been working in the air compressor industry for over 40 years. He knew more about air compressors than most anyone in the business today. His loss is a huge loss for our company but also for the industry as a whole.
William went to work for Ingersoll-Rand in 1974, right out of high school, right after they opened the plant in Mayfield, KY. He worked there until the plant closed in 2002. He learned the equipment from the ground floor and he had one of the best memories I’ve ever known. When IR left town, he did what a lot of air compressor people did, went to work for their competition. There he thrived as he had at IR and came to be a “go to” person. People from all over the industry would call him to get his input on a compressor that would not run or a situation they had not seen before.
William had been the service and shop manager at ACE for 10 years. That’s one of the hardest jobs in the industry. You have to keep the customer happy, but you also have to keep your technicians happy. Plus, you have to be an expert on every compressor because your techs are going to look to you for answers to problems they’re having. Then you have to train new techs. It’s not easy on the best day. But when things get busy and challenging, it’s truly not easy. William never seemed to let it get to him. He would get mad, some, but most of the time he had a completely level head. We’ve said it many times in the last week, there’ll never be another one like him.
One of his techs made mention that it would look really cool if they drove their red ACE trucks in the funeral procession to the cemetery. Somehow that small idea took root and became something we wanted to do. The family agreed. So, they all lined up at the funeral home and that’s all you could see coming and going down the road. When we got to the cemetery they all lined up again. William would have liked that. It was a red truck parade in honor of a very good man.
