The trucks still say Byrum. The technicians still come from Monroe and Marshville. The company still describes itself, in some places, as family owned. And since September 1, 2021, Byrum Heating & A/C has belonged to a Charlotte based home services platform backed by private investors.
That is not a scandal. It is what has happened to hundreds of family trade companies across the country over the past decade, and Byrum is a clear local example of how it works and what it means for the person calling about a broken air conditioner in July.
It started in Marshville
Byrum Heating & A/C was founded in 1996 in Marshville, a small town in Union County about 35 miles southeast of Charlotte, according to its Better Business Bureau profile, which shows the business started on September 6 of that year. Scott Byrum is listed as the founder, and the company grew over 25 years into a heating, ventilation and air conditioning contractor with locations in Monroe and Marshville, serving the eastern edge of the Charlotte metro and reaching into South Carolina.
The work was the standard trade: installation, repair and maintenance of furnaces, air conditioners and heat pumps, plus indoor air quality, for homes and businesses. The company built a reputation on what its acquirer would later call top notch tradesmanship and customer service, and by 2021 it employed a team of about 30.
The sale
NearU Services, a Charlotte based company founded in 2018 that describes itself as a founder led premier home services platform, announced the acquisition of Byrum on September 1, 2021. NearU’s founder and chief executive, Ashish Achlerkar, said Byrum had been a proven leader in Monroe, Marshville and the greater Charlotte metro for more than 25 years, and that Scott and Chandy Byrum had inspired a team of very talented associates.
Byrum was one of a string of acquisitions. NearU bought Bass Air Conditioning in Fayetteville and Hagan Heating and Air in Anderson, South Carolina, in 2020, and Carolina Air in Pinehurst in April 2021, and in each case the acquired company kept its local brand and its existing management. The Byrum deal extended NearU’s footprint into the Charlotte metro and South Carolina.
Corporate records show the new ownership date as August 31, 2021, and the legal entity as PSSK, LLC, doing business as Byrum Heating and A/C, a NearU Company. The chief executive listed is Jay Darfler, and the company now reports 32 employees. Scott Byrum appears among the founders of NearU’s parent entity, which suggests the sale was structured to keep the family invested in the larger platform.
What you actually get
For a customer, the practical changes are the ones a platform brings: standardized scheduling and dispatch, financing options, a larger pool of technicians to draw on during a heat wave, and the training and process a company with dozens of locations can afford. The reviews since the sale run above 600 five star ratings and describe punctual, neat crews and clear pricing, according to a business profile, and the BBB has accredited the company since 2000.
The other change is the one this story is about. Byrum is no longer a family company in the sense the name implies, and a customer who values that distinction should know it. The technicians are still local, the brand is still Byrum, and the entity that owns it has investors in Charlotte and a strategy of buying more companies like it.
NearU’s founder, Ashish Achlerkar, has described the company as people centric, process driven and technology enabled, and its acquisition pattern across the Carolinas has followed a template: buy an established local contractor with a good reputation, keep the name and the management, and plug it into shared systems for scheduling, training and marketing. The Byrums’ statement at the time of the sale described a business driven by faith based core values and servant leadership, and said its dedication to quality and integrity fueled every step of the service process.
The company holds North Carolina and South Carolina contractor licenses and has been accredited by the Better Business Bureau since July 2000. Its Marshville headquarters on West Marshville Boulevard remains the base, and the service area reaches into Rock Hill and the South Carolina side of the metro. For anyone searching the directory, the important thing is that the business is real, established and well reviewed, and that its ownership is not what the name suggests.
Why it matters
Family trade companies are being bought across the Carolinas at a pace that has changed what “family owned” means on a truck door. NearU is one of the buyers, Charlotte is its base, and Byrum is the example closest to home: a 25 year company built by a couple in Marshville, sold to a platform in Charlotte, with the founders’ names on the press release and the family’s name on the sign.
Whether that is good for customers depends on what they wanted from the company. If it was a technician who shows up and fixes the unit, the reviews say that has held. If it was Scott Byrum answering the phone, that ended in 2021, and the trucks do not say so.