20-year tradesman turned agency founder. FieldTech helps fellow owners automate, market, and streamline their business.
Joined July 2026
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Most people still think the freezers were just turned off.
They weren’t.
Someone forced the cases into continuous defrost and silenced the temperature alarms. Normal defrost is 10–15 minutes. Left on, the cases climb to 50°C fast while the system can still look okay from the outside.
That’s why stores didn’t get the usual early warning. The same access that controls the equipment also controls the alarms.
This isn’t complicated. A lot of food infrastructure is still running on older remote-access setups that were never designed for this. When it fails, the cost doesn’t stay with the chain, it’s passed on to the consumer!
I’ve worked in commercial refrigeration for 20 years and have been seeing a lot of comments asking why freezers and coolers are connected to the internet, and how they could get this warm. A bit of context:
Commercial refrigeration has used DDC (Direct Digital Control) and BAS (Building Automation System) platforms for decades. These systems continuously monitor temperatures, pressures, and equipment status. If a freezer fails at 11 p.m., they automatically alarm and dispatch a technician before product is lost. Across grocery stores and cold storage facilities, this prevents billions of dollars in food loss every year. They also let technicians remotely diagnose and fix issues before they become failures.
What appears to have happened here is that the attackers forced the cases into a prolonged defrost cycle instead of simply turning them off. In freezers, defrost normally uses electric heaters or hot-gas defrost for 10 to 15 minutes every few hours (or as needed by sensors) to clear ice off the evaporator. In coolers it’s usually just stopping the refrigerant flow while the fans run. These cycles are short and controlled so the product stays in a safe temperature range. If someone overrides that and leaves the heaters or hot gas running, temperatures climb quickly, which matches the 50 °C reports.
It’s fair to ask whether these systems should be online. In practice, modern grocery and industrial plants are too complex to operate without remote monitoring and control. Removing that connectivity would raise food costs and increase spoilage. These platforms are normally locked down with multiple layers of security; seeing them successfully attacked at this scale is genuinely concerning.
Hope that helps explain how something like this can happen.
I’ve worked in commercial refrigeration for 20 years. Watching the freezer stories today and reading the comments has been interesting.
A lot of people are suddenly experts on systems they’ve never touched. Commercial refrigeration has used remote monitoring and control for decades for a reason. It catches failures before product is lost and keeps the stores running. When someone overrides the controls and forces a defrost to stay on, temperatures climb fast. That’s not complicated. It’s just how the equipment works.
The bigger issue is the same one I see on the job all the time. New tools get treated like they can replace the person who actually knows the system. They can’t. Used carefully they help. Rushed in or set up on the cheap, they create new problems or leave you exposed when something goes wrong.
The tech is useful. The person who understands the equipment, the job, and what happens when it fails is still the part that matters. Cheap and fast usually costs more later.
Been managing a job way out of town in the Arctic. Crew has been away from home for weeks. Big, dirty, heavy work. Cranes. Contractors missing parts with long shipping times.
We got far enough to start up three big boilers and bring the heat back online next week. We missed the window to finish our own scope.
I saw that window closing. I also saw the crew hit the wall. I could have pushed the last couple of days and got it done. Once commissioning was set for next week, I left it on cruise control.
Half the team has to come back. Flights to book. Hotels that are not cheap. Workmanship was slipping. You could hear the drain in their voices. I would rather they come back fresh, with the right parts waiting, and leave it clean, than bust ass to the 11th hour before a flight.
Crew is on a plane right now. Everyone is going home safe.
A homeowner does not hire the best tech in town.
They hire the one they can reach before the coffee gets cold.
That is a rude fact. It is still the fact.
October 1. The first no-heat call always feels early.
It is not early. The homeowner waited until the house was cold. Your book is already full of installs. The tech who knows that unit is on another job, and last winter's notes are still in a text thread.
That is October. The shops that get through it wrote the plan in September. The rest find out at 7am when the phone starts.
Show up when you said you would. Bring the parts. Leave the place better than you found it.
This one will sit with me.
20 years in construction. Some guys get lucky. Most of it is grit and showing up when it still feels like a mistake.
Today is my 3 yr anniversary of purchasing a construction company as sole owner.
The past 3 yrs have been the hardest of my professional life. I'm both proud to have survived so far and embarrassed that I got myself into this situation in the first place.
I purchased in 2023 via SBA 7a, underwritten as a $3M rev business. QofE and my own diligence missed two main things: the seller's second business was floating most cashflow issues and their local reputation was unusable. I rebranded to "Cooper" within 95 days on Jan 1, 2024.
This industry runs on relationships and reputation. I instantly became an unknown entity and revenue dropped 95% overnight compared to what was underwritten. There are a lot of stories to tell about 2024, but tl;dr I scratched and clawed back to only $1.7M rev by the end of the year. I emptied my savings and depended on hard money to survive.
Throughout that year, I made fundamental changes to our sales and operations. We focused on municipal work because I could personally handle the administrative burden and the playing field felt more fair. But our bid -> sale -> collection timeline ballooned to around 9-12 months. Changes wouldn't bear fruit for a long time.
In Q2 2025, our 2024 efforts started to take effect. By EOY, we had grown to $3.65M in rev while improving gross margins. However, we were completely cash poor due to growth capital needs and crazy interest payments. We leaned on MCAs to get through because we couldn't compromise all our new client relationships.
This year, we professionalized further, increasing both sales and GM. Our annualized revenue is ~$6m and this will be the first year with substantial EBITDA ($1.2M). We took some less horrible debt and I'm working on a larger refi to stabilize a bit. I am still just trying to maintain overall debt coverage.
All this time, I haven't paid myself a cent. My team has remained underpaid. Everything has depended on selling the vision to both employees and clients. Selling the future to fund the present.
As I reflect on the last 3 years, I feel optimistic about the future. I am a MUCH better operator than in 2023. My team is lean and loyal. And any further growth should be upside I can capture.
But if you asked if it was all worth it, I'm not sure how I'd respond. For the past 3 yrs, I've chronically felt nauseous about paying bills, payroll, potential liability/conflict in our work. I've been less present at home. I've been very boring with friends. My health has taken a backseat to the needs of the business. Not to mention my net worth has tanked compared to pre-purchase levels.
Our conservative plan is to hit $8M in '27, $12M in '28, then $19M in '29. I know it will continue to be hard, but I'm excited to outgrow the first phase of ownership and work on a fresh set of challenges.
Here's to the next three years.
When the last guy’s notes are in a truck or a text thread, the next tech diagnoses the same unit twice.
That is the whole problem.
SiteVault keeps the site, the assets, the photos, the work orders, and the filter list on the building.
$25 a user a month
Aged equipment is the quiet money.
Green is 1–7 years. Yellow is 7–12. Red is 12+.
Estimating can pull the red units by client or site, then quote the changeout before it dies on a Saturday.
Estimating is the same idea.
Tech builds a quote off the work order, the site, or the unit.
Office sees it in Estimating. Approve it or send it back.
Rates come off that client’s card, not a guess from last winter.
How the office and the truck stay on the same page:
Office builds the work order off the site and the unit.
Tech opens that same work order, sees the photos, notes, filters, and last job.
When they close it, the notes stay on the building. Next guy does not start from a text thread.
An appointment is not a suggestion.
Drove two and a half hours for a 9am. After a pile of calls and silence I left at 2. Got the callback 30 miles from site. Turned around so we would not burn another day.
Fourteen hours later the work was done.
The part that sat wrong was treating another man's time like it was free. Show up when you said you would. Bring the tools. Leave the place better than you found it.
That is the whole trade.
Looked at a roofing company on my phone yesterday.
Google page was doing the work.
The website hid the number.
A homeowner is not going to hunt through a menu while the roof is leaking.
That is the whole job on a contractor site. Service and city on the first screen. A number you can hit with a thumb. Real work in the photo. Not a pretty homepage.
If you paid for the click, send them to that job. Not the front door.
The callback is rarely the first visit.
It is the missing note.
The wrong unit.
The filter size nobody wrote down.
Twenty years of that is enough.
Write it where the next tech can find it.
That is SiteVault.
Client. Site. Unit. Work order.
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