New digs, new services in store for 80-year-old Tri-City Services

Lori Kaye Lodes

Contributor

February 3, 2025

WISCONSIN RAPIDS – Now in its 80th year, Tri-City Services’ growth is prompting a move to a new location and the addition of plumbing to its heating, air conditioning and commercial refrigeration services. 

Andrea Jensen, owner and president of Tri-City Services, said those are some significant changes for the 24-person company that started in the refrigeration business in 1945. 

Jensen said she changed the business’s name about five years ago because the long-term plan is to add more capabilities, with some of that now materializing.

“2025 is going to be a big year for us,” she said.

Learning the ropes

Growing up in the business, Jensen said she has the perspective of several decades in the business.

Her parents, Denis and Carole Virnig, purchased the business from original owner Frank Mallek, in 1974, and operated it out of their home for the first few years.

At age 18, Jensen said she went off to college with no intention of working in the business after observing how hard her parents worked, including after regular work hours.

However, when she transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, she said she needed a part-time job and worked in the business’s office, as well as cleaning ducts throughout the summer.

When she graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, Jensen said her mother retired and she took on the roles of in-house accountant and marketing.

“I loved the marketing, and we really grew into the residential business as we were still pretty heavily commercial at the time,” she said. 

Jensen said she continued to learn the ropes under her dad’s tutelage, taking on more office management duties and other aspects of the business with his anticipated retirement.

Unfortunately, Jensen said he passed away before that could happen, and she and her brother, Scott Virnig, stepped in to run the company together for a time before she took the helm.

Today, Jensen said her brother works in the business as a service technician.

Since taking over, Jensen said Tri-City Services has earned the Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) Distinction through the State of Wisconsin Department of Commerce.

Though proud of the designation, she said the company’s success is a shared responsibility – with her husband, Andy, serving as vice president and in charge of field operations. 

“Andy and I make a pretty good team,” she said. 

Jensen said Andy originally worked at Tri-City Services from 1997 to 2008, during a time when several of her family members were involved in the business.

She said he left to work for an industrial contractor from 2008-21, returning when she knew he would be the right counterpart to grow the business to the next level.

“Since then, we’ve grown the business 17-33% every year since he’s been back,” Jensen said. “And when I say we make a pretty good team, (I mean), we make a pretty good team.”

Needed more space

The teamwork led to outgrowing Tri-City Services’ location at 3019 State Highway 73 in – which Jensen said has prompted the decision to move to the 321 4th Ave. N. location, a facility that’s about five times larger than its Highway 73 location. 

“Between growth and the addition of plumbing to our services, we need the space,” she said. “We also ran out of parking and office space in our old shop. We need a manager, but we don’t have anywhere to put them there.”

Jensen said the office staff has already made their way into the new location, with the warehouse space being readied to bring the rest of the team on site.

In order to do that, she said the warehouse space needs to be cleared and cleaned to remove equipment that was used to make pallets, as well as revamp the electrical writing required by Tri-City Services’ sheet metal shop. 

“This is going to be a great space, as our guys can bring their install trailers inside and park them there,” she said. 

Jensen said the new space will also accommodate what adding plumbing to Tri-City Services’ offerings requires.

“We get customers asking all the time, ‘Can you fix my sink? Can you fix my water heater?’” she said. “It all ties together as they’re all part of your home’s heart: heating, conditioning, refrigeration and plumbing. The outlier is electrical, and we work with another great company in town for that.”

Jensen said Tri-City Services offers these services for commercial and residential, except for refrigeration, which is solely provided to commercial accounts – bars, restaurants, cranberry warehouses, etc.

Generally speaking, she said Tri-City’s service area covers about a one-hour radius of Wisconsin Rapids, with commercial business heading as far as Wausau, whereas residential sticks a bit closer to home.

Jensen said the tri-city area referenced in the business’s name originated as Port Edwards, Nekoosa and Wisconsin Rapids, but has evolved over the years to be Marshfield, Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids.  

Oldest Furnace Contest

This time of year, Jensen said furnaces are top of mind, especially when the thermometer’s digits drop.

Understanding the importance of a well-maintained furnace, she said, prompted Tri-City Services to introduce its annual Oldest Furnace Contest in 2001.

The contest for the oldest functioning furnace in the business’s service area runs every 18-24 months, creating an educational opportunity alongside residential services awareness.

“When we started, the oldest one was a 1940s furnace,” she said. “As the years have gone on, they tend to be from the 1960s or ’70s.”

Warms the heart

Nowadays, Jensen said Tri-City Services’ business leans toward the residential side – 60-65% of overall business – with the remainder being commercial.

She said service outranks sales, as a service call is much less expensive than purchases of equipment.

Jensen said she is proud of the number of enrollees in the Tri-City Services Very Important Customer Club for annual furnace maintenance.

In a similar vein, she said the company kicked off the Warm the Hearts campaign in 2019, accepting nominations/applications and donating and installing one free furnace to a lucky recipient each year.

In 2024, Jensen said, Tri-City awarded two furnaces. 

“Warm the Hearts is our primary way of giving back,” she said. “It impacts one family, but the impact is big. It can be life-changing for the families.”

Jensen said the first recipient has since sold the house into which Tri-City Services installed the donated furnace, but her appreciation lives on.

She said the recipient now serves on the Warm the Hearts selection committee. 

“She helps to pick the next recipients, as she says we gave her such a hand up that she was able to do the windows, siding and driveway to make her house a home,” she said.

Decades of evolution

Making the new 4th Avenue location its new home base is something Jensen said she anticipates finalizing in the next two to three months, weather depending.

Planning a move of that magnitude, she said, brings to mind the many ways Tri-City Services has evolved over the decades – from a business dependent upon two-way radios to smartphones that make contacting customers so much easier.

Jensen said the business has also seen an evolution in equipment technology as well – including heat pumps and an air conditioner that also can act as a heat source in the spring and fall. 

“It’s hard for people to understand, but a heat pump moves heat,” she said. “In the winter, it draws heat from the outdoor air and circulates it through ducts into your home. In the summer, the heat pump reverses the process, drawing heat from the interior air and releasing it outdoors. We’ve sold a ton of heat pumps in the past year, between the federal tax credit and the savings on an energy bill.”

Regardless of which technology is at play, Jensen said she finds the work she does with Tri-City Services very rewarding.
“We spend so much of our time in our home – we sleep there, eat there… it’s our comfort zone,” she said. “Your indoor air quality is important because it affects your life. You may not think about it, but it really does.”