Who Is Hillbilly?
Hello, my name is Tommy. I’m a union journeyman refrigeration technician out of Knoxville, Tennessee, with Local 102. I’ve been in the HVAC/R trade for 20+ years, with refrigeration as my main lane. When I’m not chasing racks, walk-ins, and service calls that don’t care what time it is, I’m usually spending time with my family or building cool cars.
I also run the Hillbilly Refrigeration YouTube channel, where I share real-world troubleshooting, job lessons, and trade talk with one goal in mind: help grow the trade—especially by giving apprentices and young techs the kind of guidance that makes the learning curve a little less steep.
Where It All Started
My road into this trade started back in high school (2000). I was working summers for a friend’s dad, learning ductwork and basic residential HVAC. After graduating in 2004, I went full-time as a maintenance tech—cleaning coils, changing filters, and doing the everyday repairs like contactors, capacitors, and fan motors. Between 2004 and 2007, I rode with him, his father, and his grandfather—an old-school tech who’d been doing HVAC since the 1950s—and that’s where I learned the fundamentals the hard way: show up, do it right, and don’t quit until you understand the “why.”
Around that same time I started getting into walk-in coolers and ice machines, and that’s what pulled me deeper into refrigeration. I got curious and stayed curious—reading manuals, watching whatever training videos I could find, digging through forums, and learning every chance I got. That curiosity turned into a career, and eventually into a focus on supermarket refrigeration where I was fortunate to learn under a mentor who’d been in refrigeration since the 1980s and helped shape the technician I am today.
My Goal
To build a trusted, go-to community and resource for refrigeration technicians—where real experience is shared openly, questions get honest answers, and the standard stays high. I want this to be a place that helps techs at every level: apprentices who are still learning the basics, journeymen who want to sharpen their troubleshooting, and seasoned pros who appreciate straight talk and proven methods.
My long-term vision is to use the website and YouTube channel to pass down the kind of knowledge that usually takes years of long nights and hard service calls to earn—so the next generation gets a stronger start than the last, becomes safer and more confident in the field, and keeps this trade moving forward the right way.