Even though Schraer Heating and Air Conditioning has been under new ownership for almost a year, its mission remains the same.

The Warrenton-based company strives to bring quality service to the residents living in Montgomery, Warren, St. Charles and Lincoln counties.

“We would like it to be around for the next 80 years,” co-owner Jake Nielson said. “In order to do that, we’re convinced that we have to treat customers fairly.”

Nielson, who has years of experience in HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and home service work, teamed up with Josh Roman, Brent Edwards and an anonymous person to purchase Schraer in November from Gary Scott and Bill Woolf, who were owners for almost 30 years.

“What happened was when I got introduced to Gary and Bill, who were the owners of Schraer and had really built it to where it is today, we found a lot of things that we were really excited about,” Nielson said. “One was the willingness of Gary to continue on and train. Another was the value and culture and the company of taking care of customers like their neighbors as well as tackling any challenges that come up and not making excuses. We were very excited about it. We ended up going under contract in about August and we finalized the deal in November.”

Schraer has been in business since 1946, when Omar Schraer began installing furnaces in Warrenton. He added air conditioning service in the 1950s. After Scott and Woolf bought the company in 1994, they revitalized its management and later started geothermal heat pumps.

Nielson grew up in Lynndel, Utah, a small town that is 117 miles south of Salt Lake City. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and a Master’s degree from Purdue University. He now lives in O’Fallon, 25 miles from the Schraer offices in Warrenton.

Nielson and his partners own a company that has 19 employees, including Scott, who is the service manager.

“We’ve been able to grow the business, so right now we’re on track to grow 20-25 percent this year in revenue alone,” Nielson said. “We’ve been hiring field technicians and interns. We want to continue building a steady pipeline of new technicians.”

Nielson said the company is working on creating the Heritage Mark in honor of Scott’s wife, Teresa, who passed away in 2018. She worked as the office manager for decades. Nielson said Teresa was a person who has a very optimistic and positive outlook on life and made no excuses.

“Teresa had a big impact on the community, not just Schraer,” Nielson said. “The other thing I learned is people would call here randomly and ask, ‘Does that gal who used to run the book club at the library still work there?’ They would always say, ‘She’s so nice.’ I hear that now. She also had this “everyday is wonderful” mentality, not in the sense of just papering over problems with a positive and mental attitude, but more in the sense of the gratitude for the blessing it is to live and have a job to work in the business we do and be able to support our families.”