The Waldinger Corporation announced on October 5 that it has acquired United Mechanical Group, a commercial mechanical contractor headquartered in Champaign, Illinois. All United Mechanical employees will be retained, founders Chad Graham and Kerry Keller will stay on in leadership roles, and the company will keep operating under the United Mechanical name. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The asset.
Chad Graham and Kerry Keller started United Mechanical in 2017 to handle mechanical work on the wave of private apartment, office, and retail construction in Champaign-Urbana. The company does plumbing, HVAC, industrial process piping, and mechanical service for commercial and industrial clients across Central Illinois and western Indiana, on both plan-spec and plan-build projects. Its project list includes the plumbing on HUB Champaign, a 15-story, 493-unit student housing tower and its third high-rise in Champaign. On the service side it maintains chilled-water, hot-water, and rooftop systems at the University of Illinois Research Park, a 500-ton chiller and boiler plant at St. John's Catholic Newman Center, and school buildings in the Blue Ridge School District.
"When Chad and I started United Mechanical almost 10 years ago, we could have never imagined it would lead to this moment," Keller said in the release.
The buyer.
Waldinger traces back to 1906, when Austrian tinsmith Harry Waldinger opened Capital City Tin Shop in Des Moines. The company took the Waldinger name in 1969 and is now a privately held mechanical, electrical, and sheet metal contractor that designs, fabricates, installs, and services HVAC, refrigeration, electrical, plumbing, piping, and kitchen equipment systems. It reports more than 4,000 employees, about 2,500 of them in the trades, and annual revenue above $750 million. It runs branches in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.
Acquisitions have built much of that footprint. Waldinger says it has bought companies "dozens of times," and its recent run, all announced by the company, includes:
- October 2026 — United Mechanical Group (Champaign, IL): commercial plumbing, HVAC, and process piping
- August 2026 — Forward Electric (Madison, WI): 50 employees, including 45 union electricians, joining Waldinger's Madison operation
- October 2025 — Pro Electric (Kansas City, KS, and Mt. Vernon, MO): about 400 employees, including 350 union electricians
- June 2025 — Summit Electric (St. Louis): electrical service added to the St. Louis branch
- May 2025 — Project Design and Piping (Fort Wayne, IN): Waldinger's first Indiana branch
- January 2025 — Trinity Electric (Springfield, MO): electrical service in southwest Missouri
- Late 2024 — SBC Heating and Air Conditioning (Bloomington, IL) and Aupperle Plumbing and Heating (North Platte, NE)
- 2023 — Horton Electric Service Company (Springfield, MO)
Most of those deals added capacity in a market where Waldinger already had a branch, often in a trade that branch didn't yet offer. Four of the six deals since January 2025 were electrical contractors in cities where Waldinger already operated. Summit, for example, brought electrical to a St. Louis branch that had offered HVAC/R, plumbing, and rack refrigeration service. United Mechanical extends an existing region instead. Waldinger already had operations in Peoria (since 2020) and an HVAC service branch in Bloomington (since late 2024). Champaign continues that line east along I-74 with a contractor that adds plumbing, process piping, and construction work.
Derek Hileman, President of Waldinger Service, said the deal "strengthens our ability to serve clients throughout Central Illinois while creating opportunities for future growth along the I-74 corridor and into western Indiana."
What it means.
Midwest commercial mechanical owners have several kinds of buyers looking at them right now. PE-backed MEP platforms are active in the region, as State Group's purchase of Evansville's MelKay showed in September, and public strategics such as Limbach are buying too, as with its $63 million deal for Wisconsin's 1901 Inc. Waldinger is a third type: a privately held regional contractor that has been buying for decades. In its recent deals it has generally kept local brand names and leaders in place, and it says publicly that it is looking for MEP construction firms and HVAC, refrigeration, beverage, ice machine, and commercial cooking service companies.
Waldinger's recent deals show what this kind of buyer is after: a market where it can add trades next to an existing branch, a local name and client list worth keeping, and leadership willing to stay. Owners in or near Waldinger's markets, especially along I-74 and into Indiana, may hear from it before they've gone looking for a buyer.
Comparing a regional strategic's interest with a PE platform's?
Long-established contractors, PE-backed platforms, and public strategics all buy Midwest mechanical businesses, and each looks at your service base, backlog, and leadership in its own way. Schryver & Co. advises trades owners with roughly $5M to $100M in revenue on which buyers fit and what they'll focus on. No pitch, just a conversation: will@schryverco.com.
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