Krueger acquires Ozark Maintenance

Springfield-based Krueger Mechanical Services LLC has completed the purchase of 14-year-old Ozark Maintenance Co. OMC’s former owner Michael Pike is staying with the company to serve as a commercial estimator.

Krueger said he was looking for ways to expand his company’s customer base and exposure, and the acquisition made sense for his new business.

“(Ozark Maintenance) had several large accounts that we were interested in,” Krueger said. “We worked on the deal for about two months, and the purchase was complete in May.”

The newly combined company has a total of seven employees: three from the original Ozark Maintenance Co, including former owner Pike, plus Krueger and his wife, Mindy, who serves as the commercial dispatcher, and a newly-hired master mechanical technician and a financial comptroller.

The new business will specialize in being a full-service heating, air conditioning and mechanical contractor, a distinction Krueger said may set his business apart.

“We’re a service company, meaning we predominantly fix things,” he said. “We have accounts for small residential equipment as well as commercial and industrial work and work for the city of Springfield.

“There are a lot of businesses out there that specialize in new construction work, but they have to eventually learn the service side because they eventually have to know how to fix what they install. We started with the service aspect, but we also know how to do new construction as well, ” Krueger said.

The deal was completed with the help of Scott Axon, a broker with Sunbelt Business Advisors in Springfield. Details of the cost of the purchase were not disclosed.

Axon said the purchase was just a product of having the right circumstances in place at the right time.

“There’s not a lot of consolidation in the industry right now, though there was four or five years ago,” Axon said. “This particular acquisition was an isolated instance of an owner wanting to grow his new business, and this was the best way to do it.”

Krueger said he has developed a personal customer base, and that loyalty is a result of developing relationships with the customers.

“It’s all about relationships,” he said. “If I come out to your house and you like me, and you know me, and you get what you paid for, then that’s a relationship.

“Over the 15 or 16 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve had customers follow me from contractor to contractor, and it just made sense to hang out our own shingle, put our name out there and start our own company.”

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