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September 29, 2025
LA CROSSE – Ordinarily, putting in a new breakroom for your employees would not attract a lot of fanfare or media attention.
But in the case of Trane Technologies, Tom Gallant – VP of engineering and technology, Commercial HVAC Americas – Trane Technologies – said, it was a big event.
Held in partnership with the La Crosse Area Chamber of Commerce, Gallant said the late-summer event both celebrated the grand opening of the new space and honored the very employees themselves.
“That particular factory – we call it Plant 4 – has been around for [about] 70 years…,” he said. “What we are providing for the hourly employees [with this space] is more than just a breakroom. It’s a fully-functioning cafeteria, plus there’s a brand-new entrance into that cafeteria, so it’s a much more welcoming space.”
Gallant said the space also includes a changing room or locker room.
“[That space is] for them to store their personal effects, as well as their personal protective equipment that they need to wear on the job to keep them safe,” he said. “That’s all in that same space. So, it’s kind of a multi-functional space.”
Gallant said this was something Trane leadership wanted to do for some time, but they were going through a process of doing some work in the factory itself with the manufacturing line, which freed up some space for this cafeteria/breakroom.
“We were able to take some older equipment and modernize it, which allowed us to shrink the footprint of that equipment and allowed us to open up the floor space for the employees,” he said. “So, that was really the trigger that allowed us to be able to do this project in Plant 4.”
Ongoing improvements to La Crosse campus
Gallant said the cafeteria/breakroom project was part of ongoing improvements to the company’s La Crosse campus.
In 2024, he said HSR Associates announced an office remodel in Trane’s Building 13, which included installing larger windows to increase natural light.
The La Crosse campus, he said, consists of eight buildings in total.
Four of these – Plants 2, 4, 7 and 15 – he said, are dedicated to manufacturing.
Buildings 11, 12 and 18, Gallant said, accommodate the innovation centers, laboratories (including acoustics labs) and engineering offices.
Building 13, he said, functions as the training center, supporting both graduate and technician training programs.
“We have a ninth building that was our old Trane Technologies world headquarters,” he said. “But we have decommissioned that building, and it is up for sale at this point in time.”
Gallant said their goal about five or six years ago, when they spun off and created Trane Technologies, was to try to pull everybody in the La Crosse area closer together – all 2,000 employees.
“So, all those eight buildings are now within a couple of blocks of one another,” he said. “It was really about bringing employees together and not having them spread out all over the south side of La Crosse.”
Gallant said that has allowed the company to make the investment for the employees – “because we have it in a more concentrated space.”
“The enhanced employee spaces at our Trane facility in La Crosse provide further support for our [2,000 teammates],” he said. “This is another example of our ongoing investments in our employee experience – putting people at the heart of all we do.”
Trane’s birthplace
Believe it or not, Gallant said Trane was started in La Crosse in 1885 by James Trane, a Norwegian immigrant who opened his own plumbing and pipe-fitting shop.
From the beginning, Gallant said innovation was at the forefront of what they did with Reuben designing a new type of low-pressure steam heating system – known as Trane Vapor Heating.
In 1910, Gallant said James’ son, Reuben, got his mechanical engineering degree and joined his father’s plumbing company.
In 1913, the father and son team incorporated The Trane Company.
By 1916, Gallant said the Tranes were focused on manufacturing heating products.
But in 1923, another one of Trane’s innovations hit the marketplace with Reuben inventing the convector radiator, which replaced the heavy, bulky, cast-iron radiators that prevailed at the time, and can still be found in many older homes even today.
Gallant said it was a tremendous success and was followed by the development of Trane’s first air-conditioning unit in 1931.
As is the case with so many businesses, Gallant said Trane was acquired by the American Standard Companies in 1984.
Through the years that followed, he said there continued to be mergers, splits, acquisitions, consolidations and spin-offs with other companies and even within Trane itself.
Today, Gallant said Trane Technologies is a large, public global climate innovator with approximately 45,000 employees and a reported revenue of about $19.8 billion in 2024, focusing on sustainable HVAC and transportation climate solutions through its Trane and Thermo King brands.
The company’s financial positions this year, he said, indicate robust growth potential this year.
Though it is now headquartered in Ireland, and its North American headquarters are in Davidson, North Carolina, Gallant said the company has and continues to leave a huge footprint in the La Crosse region, with its manufacturing facility helping lead the company toward a sustainable future.
Leaving a permanent mark
A handful of years ago, Gallant said a major innovation took place in one of Trane’s buildings, Building 13, as it’s known in La Crosse – transforming a portion of the 80,000 square feet into a new customer experience center.
The space, Gallant said, aims to showcase advanced HVAC systems for customers and provide technicians with hands-on training through immersive laboratories and a fully electric live mechanical room.
With infrastructure that dated back to the 1950s and outdated steam and cooling systems, Gallant said the project was not an easy task.
Frigid Wisconsin winters, he said, only added to the challenges.
The solution, Gallant said: the installation of the world’s first Thermal Battery™ Storage-Source Heat Pump System.
“The HVAC system we put into Building 13 is a completely-electrified system,” he said. “So, we’ve modernized another [decades-old] building that was burning fossil fuels for heat. We call it our Storage-Source Heat Pump System, and it’s a very unique, one-of-a-kind solution to both heat and cool buildings in a cold climate year-round without burning any fossil fuels. So, we’re experimenting with our own technology in that building as well. That’s the very first application of this technology.”
Gallant noted that the results have been remarkable, with heating efficiency increasing by more than 250% compared to the previous system.
Additionally, he said the shift away from steam and the upgrades to the cooling system are expected to save up to 40 million gallons of water annually.
Gallant said the all-electric HVAC system has proven to be effective even in the harshest of winter conditions.
Once it proved itself in Trane’s Building 13, Gallant said it was time to let other customers benefit from it as well.
So far, the system has only been installed in one additional location, but Brandon Borgna – senior public relations manager for Trane Technologies Americas – said that location is massive.
“This technology also exists at 55 Water St. [in New York City], the biggest commercial building in [the city] at 3.8 million square feet,” he said. “It’s so big, it has its own postal code, and our technology is what’s providing heating and cooling and helping with the sustainability goals of that building.”
Borgna said it’s been rewarding to see the technology’s growing impact – helping other buildings boost energy efficiency, cut carbon emissions and reduce overall energy use.
“And it’s all coming from our innovation in La Crosse,” he said.
From local roots to global impact
Gallant – who has worked at Trane for 20 years – said besides being a great company, the culture is what keeps him there.
That culture, he said, includes the drive for innovation, as well as doing what’s right for the environment, the employees and the people who surround them in the community.
A snapshot of Trane Technologies’ sustainability commitment, Gallant said, includes reducing its customer emissions by one billion metric tons and leading by example with its own carbon neutrality across its global footprint.
“In La Crosse, we’ve already had some success in achieving zero waste-to-landfill back in November 2022,” he said. “[The La Crosse location is] one of the biggest users of water in the company, so we have implemented a couple of new solutions to reduce the amount of water we’re using, particularly in our engineering laboratories and our production facilities.”
Gallant said in 2023, the La Crosse location reduced its water usage by 20%.
“And we’re continuing to invest in our buildings like the Storage-Source Heat Pump solution,” he said. “We’re also looking at another technology for our innovation center that allows us to achieve those carbon neutrality targets as a company.”
Gallant said what he’s seen in La Crosse, specifically in the last five years or so, is the addition of new assembly lines and new manufacturing facilities, the upgrading of its laboratories, the creation of new spaces like the cafeteria-breakroom and the modernization of its office spaces.
“The growth we’re seeing from the demand for our innovative products is not just [translating into] increasing our investment in our production facilities, but it’s also increasing investment in other buildings on our campus,” he said. “That’s the biggest change I’ve seen is the amount of investment in our products, our people and our facilities in La Crosse.”
Gallant said the La Crosse campus has seen tremendous growth in the last five years as well.
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said there were about 1,400 employees in La Crosse.
Today, Gallant said that number is about 2,000, across both salaried and hourly employees.
“I look at what we have here in La Crosse and think of it as a bit of a hidden gem,” he said. “When you think about the innovation, the technology and the capabilities of our people, it’s quite remarkable that in a town of 50,000 people, you have a company with 2,000 employees that are committed each day to innovating for a more sustainable world.”
Gallant said La Crosse is a shining example of Trane Technologies’ culture: committed to exceptional customer service and continuous growth.
That same mindset, he said, extends across all its global facilities.
“We were started in La Crosse by a family and were family-owned for some time,” Gallant said. “And no matter where you go in the world, other Trane facilities are going to have that same family feel as here in La Crosse. That’s not ever going to change.”
