Dustin Hawkins wore the face of exhaustion.
"I'm a little gassed," the U.S. Navy veteran from Shelbyville, Illinois, said just moments after winning the apprentice competition and $20,000 at the ServiceTitan HVAC National Championship in Florida.
But the exhaustion came not just from his 90 minutes of work inside the Palm Beach County Convention Center, not just from trying to outperform nine other highly skilled apprentices who qualified for the final round.
Hawkins, a service technician for Jansen's Heating & Air in Effingham, Illinois, and third-year apprentice, walked into the room for the 7 a.m. pre-competition briefing already a bit weary. Seems the competitors had caught wind after arriving in West Palm Beach that work with sheet metal would be part of their challenge.
His experience with sheet metal?
"Zero," Hawkins said.
So on the eve of this ServiceTitan Elite Trades Championship Series competition, Hawkins needed to go to school before he could go to bed.
"I went on YouTube and just scoured for everything I could on how to do it," he added. "I probably went to bed around 12 and then didn't sleep."
The challenge called for setting a heat pump outside a simulated home and installing an air handler with a plenum on top and two duct runs to supply air. Finalists also were required to install a condensate pump.
Hawkins, who reached the semifinals of the 2023 event in Tampa, completed the challenge first among the 10 apprentices. And it was just that, a challenge, for a service technician, although Hawkins found parallels to making service calls each day for Jansen’s.
“Pretty much every job, every day, there is a moment where it doesn't go exactly right, or the measurements are wrong, or you’ve got to do something different, and you're always having to adapt,” Hawkins said. “I mean, that is the trades right there.”
Cameron Raab, of Coffman & Co. in Arvada, Colorado, finished second and collected $10,000. Billy Dahmen, of Accelerated Services in Osceola, Indiana, placed third and earned $5,000.
What Hawkins lacked in sheet metal experience might’ve been offset by his knowledge of other trades.
Hawkins grew up in Colorado, but he spent summers in Pennsylvania working for a grandfather who is a general contractor. Hawkins landed experience in roofing, framing, sheetrock, electrical, and plumbing.
“He started me out with nailing nails into a 2x4 while he was working until I was tired of it," Hawkins said. "And then slowly just doing all sorts of different things."
Hawkins expected that his winnings would help fund a family vacation for his wife and their sons, ages 7, 5, and 2.
But his family thoughts afterward also went back to that grandfather, who is now in his 70s and continues to work while receiving chemotherapy treatments for cancer.
“He's been a big impact on my life,” Hawkins said. “I'll be able to call him up and say, ‘Hey, you taught me right. This is where I ended up, and I appreciate it."
