u/Mundane-Play-4947

Anybody else deal with distributor territory politics like this in HVAC?

I started my own HVAC company after leaving a large residential outfit late last October. Since then we've cleared a little over $100k in revenue and have been growing fast.

About 2 months in I got set up through Trane Supply out of Springfield, MO with a credit line and dealer account. Started building a relationship, quoting equipment, moving toward becoming a legit Trane dealer.

Then out of nowhere I get a call saying my account, credit line, and access are all terminated because another distributor (O'Connor) claimed I was in “their territory.”

Apparently Springfield never should have opened the account in the first place because Southwest MO belongs to O'Connor distribution.

Now I’m basically told:

I can only get RunTru

or buy through existing dealers

or go elsewhere entirely

What blows my mind is I wasn’t trying to “backdoor” anything. Their own Trane sales rep set the account up.

Is this just normal HVAC industry politics?

Do distributors really protect territories and existing large-volume dealers this aggressively?

For the guys who own companies:

how common is this?

did you diversify brands because of situations like this?

is becoming heavily dependent on one manufacturer/distributor relationship a mistake?

I’m honestly curious because this was a pretty brutal wake-up call about how much control distributors can have over independent contractors.

Anybody else deal with distributor territory politics like this in HVAC?

I started my own HVAC company after leaving a large residential outfit late last October. Since then we've cleared a little over $100k in revenue and have been growing fast.

About 2 months in I got set up through Trane Supply out of Springfield, MO with a credit line and dealer account. Started building a relationship, quoting equipment, moving toward becoming a legit Trane dealer.

Then out of nowhere I get a call saying my account, credit line, and access are all terminated because another distributor (O'Connor) claimed I was in “their territory.”

Apparently Springfield never should have opened the account in the first place because Southwest MO belongs to O'Connor distribution.

Now I’m basically told:

I can only get RunTru

or buy through existing dealers

or go elsewhere entirely

What blows my mind is I wasn’t trying to “backdoor” anything. Their own Trane sales rep set the account up.

Is this just normal HVAC industry politics?

Do distributors really protect territories and existing large-volume dealers this aggressively?

For the guys who own companies:

how common is this?

did you diversify brands because of situations like this?

is becoming heavily dependent on one manufacturer/distributor relationship a mistake?

I’m honestly curious because this was a pretty brutal wake-up call about how much control distributors can have over independent contractors.