Citation-backed Gallo Mechanical adds AIRCOR Services, filling in the South Carolina Midlands

Gallo Mechanical, the New Orleans specialty mechanical contractor majority-owned by Citation Capital, has added AIRCOR Services, a Lexington, South Carolina HVAC and mechanical contractor serving the Columbia and Midlands region. Gallo announced the combination on LinkedIn on November 12. Terms were not disclosed.

The asset.

AIRCOR Services operates from Lexington, just west of Columbia, and provides HVAC and mechanical services across South Carolina’s Midlands. Its own site describes predictive maintenance, mechanical repairs and installation, equipment replacement, controls, pipe fitting, sheet-metal fabrication, and rental equipment to keep businesses running during a repair. Gallo called AIRCOR a trusted provider in the Columbia and Midlands market, built on workmanship and customer relationships, and said the combination strengthens its ability to serve customers and expands its presence in a growing market. The announcement does not name AIRCOR’s owners or say whether they stay in operating roles.

The platform.

Gallo was founded in 1945 in New Orleans and is in its fourth generation. It provides complex HVAC and plumbing construction, retrofit, and maintenance services to healthcare, hospitality, education, industrial, and high-tech customers across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. In June 2025, Dallas-based Citation Capital acquired a majority stake, with Gallo’s management retaining a significant interest. At the time, the company pointed to data-center expansion, manufacturing reshoring, and energy-efficiency demand as growth drivers. JP Hymel is CEO and president, and David Gallo is chairman.

Since that investment, Gallo has been thickening an office network that already runs from Houston to Norfolk, including North Charleston and Myrtle Beach in South Carolina and a Charlotte regional hub it opened in late October. In a March 2026 interview, David Gallo said the company had more than 700 employees and expected 2026 revenue to top $500 million, and that the Carolinas were on track to account for more of Gallo’s work than Louisiana — a shift that began when the company entered those markets in 2018 and 2019. Cherokee Mechanical, the Calhoun, Georgia commercial and industrial HVAC contractor Gallo added on October 6, was the first disclosed add-on used to connect those existing markets. AIRCOR is the second, five weeks later.

Filling in the Midlands, not planting a flag.

AIRCOR does not open South Carolina for Gallo. Gallo’s own contact page already lists offices in North Charleston and Myrtle Beach, and the new Charlotte hub sits just up the interstate from Columbia. This puts a Midlands shop in the inland gap between those coastal South Carolina offices and the Charlotte market — a density play in a state Gallo was already in, five weeks after Cherokee Mechanical did the same kind of work for Northwest Georgia.

What it means.

Two local commercial mechanical add-ons in five weeks is the sign of a PE-backed platform running a program, not completing a one-off. The pattern is consistent: established HVAC and mechanical shops in markets that sit between offices Gallo already has. For owners of commercial and industrial mechanical contractors in the Carolinas — and in other gaps on a map that now stretches from Texas to Virginia — there is a well-capitalized specialty mechanical buyer that has already shown it will write the next check. Other commercial mechanical groups have used the same local add-on approach, including Waldinger with United Mechanical Group in Central Illinois and Medford Wellington with MCL Mechanical Services in New England.