US HVAC roll-up, mapped
The largest HVAC companies in the US now run over 12,000 locations. They are all owned by private equity.
For field-service software, distributors, financing platforms, and the PE firms still buying. The trade name on the truck is rarely the owner. The fund is.
The market, in three numbers
A trade industry inside a half-built roll-up.
US HVAC services industry
Residential install and repair, commercial mechanical, and the parts and equipment distribution that feeds both. Source: IBISWorld 2024 US HVAC Industry Report.
active US HVAC contractors
BLS QCEW NAICS 238220 establishment count. Roughly 90 percent are owner-operators with one to five trucks. The roll-up has barely scratched them.
share held by the top 10 platforms
Combined, the ten largest PE-backed HVAC operators run about 12,000 locations. The other 113,000 contractors still belong to the family that built them.
Sources: IBISWorld 2024 US HVAC Industry Report; BLS QCEW NAICS 238220; Orbital roll-up tracker, April 2026.
Methodology
Why the roll-up numbers move and the published estimates do not.
The trade press counts platforms once a quarter. The PE buyers update their decks once a year. We track the deals, the new locations, and the closures rolling, because the market changes every week.
How the 12,000-location figure is built
- Start with every active US HVAC contractor. Cross-referenced against the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages NAICS 238220 series, the Air Conditioning Contractors of America member directory, and the manufacturer dealer networks for Carrier, Trane, Lennox, and Goodman.
- Resolve each contractor to a parent. If the trade name is Joe's Heating and Air but the LLC is a subsidiary of Apex Service Partners or Wrench Group, we capture both. The local owner often stays on after the sale, so the contact is real even when the cap table changed.
- Track the deal flow. Most HVAC roll-up transactions never make Bloomberg. They show up in state corporate filings, in equipment-dealer reassignments, and in quiet brand changes on the truck. We watch all three.
- Find the owner who still answers the phone. Around 90 percent of US HVAC contractors are independent. Most of those owners are between 55 and 70, have no internal succession plan, and are the most prospected demographic in the trades. We find them by name, with a verified email and a direct dial.
- Refresh on a rolling schedule. Site-level signals run continuously against the universe of US small businesses, so closures and acquisitions land in the dataset weeks after they happen, not the next quarterly report.
If you want the deal-flow breakdown for a specific platform or state, ask. We do not hide the working.
By state
Where the HVAC contractors actually are.
The five largest states carry roughly 35 percent of US HVAC contractors. Per capita, the Sun Belt dominates. Year-round cooling load means more trucks per resident than in northern states with a shorter cooling season.
| # | State | HVAC contractors | Per 100k residents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | 13,800 | 45 |
| 2 | California | 12,600 | 32 |
| 3 | Florida | 10,900 | 47 |
| 4 | New York | 6,200 | 31 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | 5,100 | 39 |
| 6 | Illinois | 4,800 | 38 |
| 7 | Ohio | 4,600 | 39 |
| 8 | North Carolina | 4,500 | 42 |
| 9 | Georgia | 4,300 | 39 |
| 10 | Arizona | 3,700 | 49 |
| 11 | Michigan | 3,500 | 35 |
| 12 | Virginia | 3,300 | 38 |
| 13 | Tennessee | 3,100 | 43 |
| 14 | New Jersey | 3,000 | 32 |
| 15 | Indiana | 2,700 | 39 |
Counts rounded to the nearest hundred for display. The dataset itself is exact, down to the LLC name and trade brand. Source: Orbital contractor universe map, April 2026; per-capita math against US Census 2024 population estimates.
The top ten platforms
The largest HVAC companies, and the funds that own them.
Trade names are loud. The math is quiet. The ten platforms below together run roughly 12,000 US locations. All ten are owned by private equity. Beneath them are about 113,000 independent HVAC contractors who have not sold yet.
| # | Platform | US locations | Parent PE owner and notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apex Service Partners | ~2,400 | Owned by Alpine Investors. The fastest-growing HVAC and plumbing roll-up of the past five years. Acquired more than 150 home-services brands. Operating model leaves the local trade name on the truck. |
| 2 | Wrench Group | ~1,800 | Owned by Leonard Green and Partners after acquiring from Investcorp in 2022. Houses well-known regional brands including Coolray, Hobson Heating and Air, and Parker and Sons. Concentrated in the Sun Belt. |
| 3 | ARS / Rescue Rooter | ~1,400 | Operates as American Home Services. Owned by American Securities. One of the longest-running multi-state HVAC and plumbing operators, with sites in more than 25 states. |
| 4 | Service Experts | ~1,200 | Owned by Morgan Stanley Capital Partners after Enercare divested. Around 100 branches across the US and Canada. Heavy commercial mix alongside residential service. |
| 5 | Authority Brands | ~1,100 | Owned by Apax Partners. Parent of One Hour Heating and Air, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, Mister Sparky, and Mosquito Squad. Franchise-heavy model alongside corporate-owned units. |
| 6 | One Hour Heating and Air | ~900 | Sits inside Authority Brands but operates as a distinct national franchise. Listed separately because the franchisee is the buyer for most vendor pitches, not the parent. |
| 7 | Aire Serv | ~800 | Part of Neighborly, owned by KKR. National HVAC franchise with concentration in the Midwest and Southeast. Franchisees are independent business owners on a royalty model. |
| 8 | Southern Home Services | ~700 | Owned by Bain Capital. Built through acquisition of regional HVAC and plumbing leaders across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic since 2021. |
| 9 | Sila Services | ~900 | Owned by Harvest Partners. Multi-brand HVAC, plumbing, and electrical platform spanning the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast. |
| 10 | Redwood Services | ~800 | Owned by Alpine Investors, the same firm behind Apex. Different operating thesis: keeps acquired brands stand-alone with operator-led leadership rather than a single integrated platform. |
Counts marked "~" are approximate, drawn from each platform's most recent public disclosures, trade-press reporting, and our contractor map. Roll-up activity moves these numbers month to month. The parent PE owner column is the cap-table owner; the operating company often keeps the founding family in a leadership role for several years after the sale.
Our take
HVAC consolidation is half complete. The list of independents that have not sold yet is the most important vendor list in the trades.
We believe
If you sell into HVAC and your CRM is sorted by trade name, you cannot see the deal.
The standard vendor motion in HVAC has not caught up to the cap table. A field-service software rep walks into a Coolray branch in Atlanta and pitches the local GM. The local GM does not buy software anymore. Wrench Group buys software for Coolray, and Leonard Green signs off on the line item. That is three levels of org chart that did not exist five years ago, and most vendor data tools index by the trade name on the truck, which is the level that has the least authority.
A founder we talked to last quarter sold his Phoenix-area HVAC company to one of the roll-ups in 2022. Two years and 40 acquisitions later, he runs a regional segment with 600 trucks. He told us his inbound vendor pitches still come addressed to his old four-truck LLC, by name, asking if he wants a free demo. The same vendors are not pitching to the parent at all, because the parent is not in their database. Meanwhile, the 113,000 independents that have not sold yet, the ones the PE buyers are racing each other to find, are sitting underused in everyone else's outbound. That is the list that matters in this market for the next three years.
Who buys this data
B2B vendors selling into 125,000 HVAC contractors.
This page is for the teams selling into HVAC, not the contractors themselves. The buyer for this dataset usually falls into one of these categories.
Field-service management software
ServiceTitan, FieldEdge, Housecall Pro, Jobber, and the next wave of vertical SaaS selling dispatch, invoicing, and call center to independent HVAC contractors. The largest single buyer category in the trades.
Equipment distribution
Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Daikin, and their dealer-channel teams. The roll-ups have started negotiating equipment directly with manufacturers; the independent dealer relationship is still where the volume is.
Parts wholesalers
Watsco, Johnstone Supply, Ferguson HVAC, and regional supply houses. Same dynamic as equipment: the long tail of independents is where the daily counter sales happen.
Consumer financing platforms
Sunlight Financial, Service Finance, GreenSky, and others selling point-of-sale financing for high-ticket equipment replacements. The contractor signs the financing partnership; the homeowner uses it.
Lead generation and marketing
HomeAdvisor, Angi, Networx, Thumbtack, and the local-SEO agencies. HVAC has one of the highest cost-per-lead figures in home services. The contractors are buying leads constantly.
Training and certification
NATE, RSES, manufacturer-specific certification programs. Workforce shortage in HVAC is structural. Anyone who certifies technicians has a real-time prospect list inside this dataset.
Private equity buyers
The roll-up firms themselves. Alpine, Leonard Green, Bain, Harvest, Apax, and a dozen smaller mid-market funds use this dataset the same way the software vendors do, just with a different ask at the end of the call.
Adjacent universes built the same way: the HVAC owner email list, the contractor email list, and the broader by-industry email lists.
Plain-spoken
When the HVAC dataset is the wrong fit.
Do not buy this if any of the following are true.
You only sell into the platforms. If your motion is one annual contract with Apex and one with Wrench Group, you do not need 125,000 records. You need a dozen names at the parent level. Save your budget.
You sell to homeowners, not contractors. Consumer-side HVAC products, replacement aggregators, and homeowner-direct equipment marketplaces have a different shape and a different buyer. The data here is operator-side, not consumer-side.
You need equipment manufacturer data. Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, and the rest of the OEMs are not in this dataset as buyers. They are the suppliers our buyers buy from. Different list, different motion.
You are looking for HVAC permit or inspection data. County and city permit records are public but messy. We do not stand them up here. The decision-maker contact is what we build.
The honest version
Why most HVAC vendor data is wrong.
If you Google "largest HVAC companies in the US," you get a mix of trade-press listicles and consultancy decks that round the answer to the brand. ServiceTitan publishes a top 50 every year. ACCA publishes member rankings. ACCA and IBISWorld both produce respectable category-level reporting. Where the public lists fall short is the cap table. Most of them list the operating brand and skip the parent PE owner entirely, which is the level at which buying decisions for software, equipment financing, and national accounts now happen.
The next problem is freshness. The roll-up doing 200 to 300 transactions a year means a top-50 list published in March is wrong by July. Wrench Group alone has acquired more than 30 regional brands in the past three years. Apex Service Partners has acquired more than 150. The trade-press lists treat each acquired brand as a stand-alone company, so the same trucks get counted twice, once under the original name and once under the platform. We track the parent, the brand, and the local LLC separately so the dataset reflects what actually shows up on the invoice.
The third problem is the long tail. Roughly 113,000 of the 125,000 US HVAC contractors are independent. Most never appear in any top-50 list because they have one to five trucks and a website that runs on Wix. They are also the most prospected demographic in the trades. The PE firms want them as targets. The software vendors want them as accounts. The financing platforms want them as referral partners. Every list of "the largest HVAC companies" misses them by definition, which is why the next paragraph of this page is about how to find them anyway.
This is exactly the gap Orbital was built for. We map the universe of US small and mid-market businesses, find the owner of each one, and validate the contact before it reaches you. Nothing about that is HVAC-specific, which is why we can also map dentists, gas stations, med spas, restaurants, and auto dealers the same way. What is specific to HVAC is the layer on top: service mix, equipment-dealer affiliation, location count, and whether the contractor sits under a roll-up parent or still answers to the founding family.
Questions
Before you ask sales about the HVAC dataset.
What are the largest HVAC companies in the US?
The ten largest HVAC platforms in the US are Apex Service Partners, Wrench Group, ARS/Rescue Rooter, Service Experts, Authority Brands, One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning, Aire Serv, Southern Home Services, Sila Services, and Redwood Services. Together they run over 12,000 locations. All ten are owned by private equity. They sit inside a universe of roughly 125,000 US HVAC contractors, so even rolled up the top ten hold under 10 percent of the market.
Who owns the biggest HVAC companies in the US?
Private equity. Alpine Investors owns Apex Service Partners and Redwood Services. Leonard Green and Partners owns Wrench Group. American Securities owns ARS/Rescue Rooter through American Home Services. Morgan Stanley Capital Partners owns Service Experts. Apax Partners owns Authority Brands. Harvest Partners owns Sila Services. The brand on the truck is rarely the owner. The owner is a fund in New York, Boston, or San Francisco.
How many HVAC contractors are there in the US?
About 125,000 active HVAC contractor establishments, per the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages NAICS 238220 series. Roughly 90 percent are independent operators with one to five trucks. The roll-up era has bought up the largest 12,000 or so locations. The remaining 113,000 contractors are the long tail that most field-service software, parts wholesalers, and lead-gen platforms are actually trying to reach.
How big is the US HVAC industry?
Roughly 150 billion dollars in annual revenue across HVAC contracting and services, per the IBISWorld 2024 US HVAC Industry Report. That spans residential install and repair, commercial mechanical, and the parts and equipment distribution that feeds both. Equipment manufacturing through Carrier, Trane, Lennox, and Goodman is separate, and adds tens of billions more.
Is the HVAC industry being consolidated by private equity?
Yes, and the wave is roughly half complete. Since 2018, PE has assembled platforms by buying up successful family-run HVAC companies, layering on franchise brands, and rolling them into multi-state operators. The ten largest platforms now run more than 12,000 locations combined. Industry sources track 200 to 300 transactions per year. Most owners selling are between 55 and 70 and have no internal succession plan.
Which states have the most HVAC contractors?
Texas, California, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania have the largest contractor populations, driven by population, climate, and housing stock. Per capita, the picture flips in the Sun Belt, where year-round cooling load means more contractors per resident than in northern states with shorter cooling seasons.
Who buys data on the largest HVAC companies?
Vendors selling into the HVAC trade. Field-service software like ServiceTitan, FieldEdge, and Housecall Pro. Equipment distributors and parts wholesalers. Consumer financing platforms. Lead-gen networks. Training and certification bodies. The private equity firms doing the roll-up themselves, who need a working list of the independents that have not sold yet. The common thread is needing the owner and the parent, not the trade name on the door.
Can I filter the HVAC contractor data by state or PE owner?
Yes. The dataset supports filtering by state, metro, service mix (residential, commercial, refrigeration), location count, and parent ownership when the contractor sits under a roll-up platform. Tell us the segment you want and we send a sample of around 100 verified owner records before anything changes hands.
See the HVAC contractor dataset before you pay for it.
Tell us the states, service mix, or parent platforms you want. We send a free sample of around 100 verified owner records you can check against your own pipeline, no commitment, no email-list back-and-forth.
Get the sample