Inside Plumbing Career: The AI-Proof Job (for Now…)

Listen, this isn't a glamorous position.
You're gonna be in crawl spaces, you're gonna be getting dirty, you're gonna have pseudo-lovia, it's just not pretty.
Hi, I'm Ravozeri, and welcome to How Much Can I Make.
I am a curious journalist, fascinated by what people do for a living, what their jobs are really like, and how much they can earn.
Join me as we dive into stories behind careers, uncovering insights and details, which I hope you'll find as intriguing as I do.
So let's get started.
And we are here with my plumber and an excellent plumber with Mark Anderson.
So, first of all, thanks a lot for doing it.
I really appreciate it because I heard that a lot of Gen Z want to be plumbers.
So let's dive right in and find out first of all, what inspired you or made you become a plumber?
That's a funny question.
Why?
Because I used to be a foot messenger right out of high school, and I'd walk all over Manhattan.
And one day on the way home, I was walking up the ramp past this uh homeless guy, and and as I'm passing him, he's saying, Shittin's more important than eating.
Shitting's more important than sleeping.
And the universe had me in the right place at the right time to hear those words.
That didn't inspire me to become a plumber, but uh years later, I thought back and I said, you know, I'm I might have subconsciously taken that good advice.
It is a good advice, and I think he's totally right.
But I'm glad you asked that question because you know, when you said a lot of Gen Z are choosing careers as plumbers, and and I would really want to know why individually, what you know, what's the why for that?
And and the reason I'm curious is because I kind of fell into it.
I was working at IBM, somebody hooked me up there, and then they laid us off.
And the next thing that opened was um a job working as a service tech for a fuel and gas company.
And I made the best of it.
It wasn't what I would have chosen.
But one of the tenets of Buddhism is right occupation, and that's important because it's gonna take up most of your time when you choose your occupation.
It has to be something that inspires you every day.
But I think Gen Z is choosing it.
First of all, plumbing is not threatened by AI, it could add to AI.
That's the thing.
I have a friend who is a very successful accountant, and he told his son, go be a plumber, because he thinks it's uh he will make more money eventually.
Well, it's it's lucrative for the right person.
And the the thing is for me, I had to find, well, let's face it, you're working for an oil company, brushing and vacuuming oil boilers.
Now, when I was a foot messenger, I would have to, you know, wipe the car exhaust out of my nostrils at the end of the day at an oil company cleaning burners, you're it's worse.
You know, it's all over you.
The thing that I found in it that helped me to excel, and I did, was that I like people and I I like doing for people.
I like you know, there's a saying, you can't pay somebody to do a good job.
You can pay somebody to do a job, but a good job is a gift, and I liked to give that gift, you know, that made me feel good.
Do you need formal training or certificate to become a plumber?
Uh you need to have a uh a license in certain areas.
So my initial experience was with HVAC, but I had customers that uh couldn't get a plumber.
So because my HVAC customers couldn't find a plumber, I went and got licensed.
What are the most typical repairs that you have to do?
Drain clogs are are fairly common.
And then uh along with blockages, maybe leaks uh here or there, you know, minor leaks, so you're in and out of a house within an hour or two.
But this time of year, maybe freeze-ups will keep you in a house for three or four days trying to find brakes and pipes and repair them.
Uh it's gotten a lot easier over the years because now we have press fittings, which is great.
You can solder without having uh all the water out of the pipe.
You know, you're just pressing the fitting.
You can't solder like that, but you can press the fitting on.
So it it's quicker.
You know, sometimes the the weather drives the work, and sometimes, you know, it's just the luck of the phone call, you know, whatever you have.
When you learned how to become a plumber, did you learn it on the job, uh like watching somebody?
I had very little training uh with anything, even with HVAC.
I was uh sent around with a guy doing annual services for two weeks, and then I was in a truck on my own, sink or swim.
And um when I look back, I'm kind of amazed that that was acceptable for anybody.
But I'm also kind of frustrated at the level of training I need to provide today when guys show up.
I worked with guys who were thoughtful about how to solve problems, and that's really everything I look at is you know, I'm gonna solve a problem.
It's one way or another.
But that's a lot of it was just self-taught.
So how do you train your new employees?
Um, I have them do a a ride-along with one of the more experienced guys for as long as necessary, usually a minimum of two weeks, sometimes longer.
But we also have now today we have uh training that wasn't available years ago.
There's uh schools.
I I sent a guy recently to a school in Texas for two weeks, and you know, he learned a lot.
He came back with a lot of confidence, and that was for HVAC.
But they also have plumbing schools.
Um, what's difficult to find is uh in the northeast here we have a lot of hot water heating.
I haven't found a school for that.
So that's something we have to focus on in-house.
When you want to hire a new plumber, what are the skills or character traits that you're looking for?
Well, for for HVAC, I want to see that they have the um APA certification for plumbing, just two years experience.
Working in the field.
Yeah, working in the field.
Yeah.
But I do hire apprentices now and again when we need uh, you know, sometimes for installs we need another pair of hands.
And so that's a guy we want to have the ability to learn and move forward so we could bring in the next helper.
And that's kind of been frustrating.
That's we don't see a lot of people come in that are picking it up quickly.
Is it a physically challenging job?
Yes, but not like it used to be.
Before my time, plumbers worked with cast iron for drains and they, you know, copper and you know, we do everything with PVC.
It's light as a feather.
These old guys worked hard.
You know, pipes were always cut and threaded on the job site, and or they had to melt lead and pour it into the joints on the cast iron drain pipes, and it's hard, hot work.
So they just glue it together.
We work with glue.
It smells bad, but it's uh it's lightweight.
But it is hard work.
You're still drilling holes, you're still uh, you know, you're never invited to any place comfortable.
You're in a cold house, you're in a hot house, you're in an attic, you're in a crawl space or basement.
You know, it is challenging.
Right.
If somebody wants to start, do they need to invest in any kind of tools?
It's good to have your own hand tools.
Most companies are going to require that.
You know, a map gas torch and you know, set of wrenches, adjustable wrenches, you know, screwdrivers, just basic hand tools.
What would you say is the biggest challenge of the job?
I th I think like anything, anything you do, it gets old and then you go through periods where you don't want to, but you make yourself.
I think that can happen with anything you think.
What are beginner columnists can make?
If they have zero experience and they're coming in to learn, it depends on where they're working.
I I would I would say it wouldn't be lower than 15 an hour.
Maybe somebody pays less than that, but maybe 15 to 23 an hour, which is great to to be learning.
Right.
But the higher that number is, the more your employer is gonna want to see you step up and learn.
And if you're floundering and you that they're getting bad feedback about your progress, then you're probably not gonna stick around long.
How much is an experienced plumber will make an hour?
It's not necessarily gonna be hourly because most companies now pay by performance and they pay spiffs.
What is spiffs?
Spiffs are you're rewarded monetarily for either hitting certain benchmarks in revenue or for selling certain items.
So let's say somebody comes in here and I have a uh a bad valve and it's all crusty.
They could replace the valve or they can talk to me about water treatment and sell me a softener.
Well, then they would get spiffed on that softener, you know.
When we do that, we have a water test kit, and I like the guys to do it right with the customer so the customer can see that nobody's making anything up.
Right.
You know, we don't want to sell you a softener when your hardness is two, right?
You know, um, I know plumbers now can six figures is is not out of the question.
Really?
Yeah, wow.
That's why Gen Z wants to be plumbers.
Yes.
Um, but you know, look at the other stuff.
It's not just about the money, it's about this is your occupation, it's gonna take up your life.
Uh, you have to make sure it's a good fit for you.
You don't want that hundred K reluctantly.
Right.
You want it because you're out there having a good time every day.
You have to love it.
Yeah.
What is the potential of growth in this business?
Well, I know as a company, we could grow as fast as we can hire.
You know, is if we can get the people that are gonna stick around and do the right job and you know, show up, there's always a way to provide work.
What would you say is more lucrative, being a plumber or being HVAC expert?
Well, we see more HVAC work, but when I look at uh the industry overall, they say that plumbers per truck can bring in more revenue.
And I I would say that that's probably because there's uh the materials are less expensive and there's fewer callbacks, you don't have uh warranty issues.
You know, a piece of pipe is a piece of pipe.
Uh so you know, I I would say probably do better with plumbing.
Is there an area of expertise that the somebody who wants to be a plumber should concentrate on to make even more money?
That's an interesting question because some companies have done that.
You see, Roto Rooter was strictly drain cleaning.
Okay.
And so it was easy for them to train people on one thing.
Whereas if you're a general plumber, a master plumber, there's so many things to know.
You have to know some electrical work, you have to know many different ways to put pipes together and what kind of pipes they're gonna be.
Uh, you have to know what pipe to use in the right application, whether it's type L copper, type M, type K, which PECS is expandable, which isn't.
There's a lot to know.
But if you're gonna focus on, well, I just do water heaters.
Uh maybe you can make that happen, you know, and just be a water heater company or just be a drain cleaning company.
But you really need to know everything.
Most people want to stick with the same person to come in and they establish a relationship, which is a big word.
It's you know, everything's about that.
Even coming in as an employee, coming into a company, it's about relationship.
What advice would you give to somebody who wants to get into the business?
When I sat down with Vince Berardi for an interview, um he owned Berardi Fuel.
And he told me, listen, this isn't a glamorous position.
You're gonna be in crawl spaces, you're gonna be getting dirty, you're gonna have soot all over you, it's just not pretty.
And I said, I got a bunch of kids to feed, I don't care.
Uh, but he wasn't lying.
It's dirty work sometimes, it's hard work.
All hours also?
All hours, yeah.
We did a lot of overtime hours, uh, a lot of night calls.
But it gives back to you.
What you bring to it is what you're gonna get back.
I wanted to ask you, what is the biggest reward of that satisfaction of you fix something, but uh all right.
I I love people, you know, I just do.
And to go into a house and you solve a problem, you're like Superman.
You know, you've done something they can't do, and not only are they happy, they give you money.
Yeah, you know.
So it you can't beat that.
And sometimes they they give you more than what you asked for, uh, you know, in terms of tips or gifts.
People are just genuinely, in most cases, people are genuinely nice.
And right.
It's rewarding all the way around.
If there was one thing you could have done differently before when you started in the business, what would that be?
Probably would have gotten some business advice way sooner.
I didn't think that was necessary.
In fact, I didn't even know it was such a thing.
The unfortunate thing now is most of the business advice you can get is to turn you into a multimillion dollar company.
And that's not necessarily what everybody's after, you know.
I'm not after that.
But you could get as a plumber to advance.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, but manage managing um, you know, five, ten people, that's that's plenty.
Yeah.
And there's companies that do very well that size.
And it's just a matter of, you know, the business advice you need is gee, what what percentage of revenue do I spend on advertising?
What percentage do I spend on materials and labor, and how to break it down so you know when you're out of line and when you're not out of line.
How many years have you been a plumber?
Since 1987, I believe it was.
Okay.
So you got tons of experience.
Yeah.
Are you still being challenged in your world?
My service manager back at Barardi's, uh, Vince's nephew Steve, uh, he once said, I've been at this 25 years and I still haven't seen everything.
Oh.
And that's how it is.
Yeah, you know, there's always uh some bizarre occurrence that and and you've never seen it in 20 years, you've never seen it.
Maybe somebody else ran into it 30 times in five years, but that's just that's how it is.
Right.
Do you love your job?
Or do you still love your job?
I have a love-hate relationship with my job.
When I have guys that are stepping up to the plate and they're doing everything as if they love it, I'm thrilled, you know.
And it's not because I'm jumping in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck, it's because they're making the customers happy, and that's what we want to do every single time.
Do you consider it a stressful job?
Yes.
And at any any level of the job can be stressful.
I mean, obviously being in management or ownership is is going to be stressful.
You know, sometimes you're worried about how you're going to meet payroll, but sometimes you got your finger on the end of the pipe and you can't reach the shutoff, and uh if you let go of that pipes, you know, there's gonna be a flood.
You know.
So you know, there's there's situations or any number of things can happen uh that uh you know could t easily turn your day into a disaster, you know, if if something that you're trying to change a valve, maybe on the bottom of an oil tank and it breaks, you know.
Hasn't happened to me, but it could.
And then what do you do?
You know, so there's there's always some factor that's gonna add stress.
Where do you see the business going?
You think it's gonna be changing in the near future?
It it depends on what happens.
I mean, with with HVAC, obviously there's a big push to get people on heat pumps, and there's huge pros and there's huge cons uh to heat pumps.
They're trying to do away with fuel oil and propane, and that's completely gonna change the industry.
It's it's going to become far more technical for the service tech.
These inverter-driven heat pumps are not simple to work on and diagnose.
Plumbing is not changing so rapidly.
You know, the materials we use and the methods for fastening materials uh changes, which the worst effect of that is the cost of the equipment that you need to purchase to be a plumber.
You know, that goes up.
Right.
But the work itself actually gets a little bit easier.
If you have more ways of doing it, then you know, it might get you out of a jam where where if you just had one way to do it, you can't do it that way here.
But now you have other options.
Okay, well, thanks a lot for doing it.
Very informative.
I can't wait for the young generation to hear it and see if they still want to get into plumbing like I hear.
Well, I hope I d I don't want to talk anybody out of it, but I'd love for them to really assess why they want to do something.
And it's you know, if it's just for the money, rub a bank.
Great.
All right, thanks again.
Thank you, Mara.
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