In the summer of 1991, Cory Logue was still working construction, building houses and remodeling homes. That year, a friend of his who worked for Capital Heating & Cooling mentioned that if Cory was interested in working for the company, he’d put in a good word for him.
Cory’s decision to call us up and sit for an interview turned out to be the first step in a long and skilled career.
This month, Cory celebrates 30 years with our company. For perspective, that’s before Larry Schmidtke—the son of our founder and the father of current owners, Bill, Chuck, and Dean—retired.
Today, Cory bids and manages commercial projects. But he’s held many other positions at the company. Back at the beginning, he joined the duct-cleaning team. After only five months, he became a residential installer. About five years later, he started apprenticeship training to become a commercial installer. But his supervisor, Larry, saw potential in Cory’s progress and experience as a builder and advocated for him to fast-track his training. After only two years of the five-year apprenticeship, Cory successfully challenged the training test and became a journeyman.
Since then, he’s worked exclusively in our commercial department, eventually developing a specialty in water treatment plants. These projects are much more time consuming to work on and manage because the fiberglass joints used in the process are trickier to install.
Today, Cory puts in bids and manages those jobs from start to finish, working HVAC projects across the region. It’s a good place to be, he says. “I like what I do. I like the people I work around. I like the company I work for.”
With three grown children and two grandchildren, Cory and his wife, Lynn, are starting to travel more during their free time. To get away to the sunshine, the pair like to spend time in Mexico and will visit Hawai’i for a second time in the spring. Periodically, they escape Olympia to spend a weekend in Wenatchee or the coast.
There’s one hobby he picked up from a construction buddy, before he started working for us: stock car racing. As a NASCAR enthusiast, Cory races about ten times a year with friends he’s known since he took up the sport. In fact, he and some friends own and operate their own car. (Take a peek and you’ll see that Capital is one of their sponsors! We’ve donated materials.)