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OUR STORY
It started at $6 an hour
Mike Steele got into plumbing the way a lot of people get into a trade. He was newly married, he needed work, and his father-in-law needed help. Six dollars an hour. He did not expect it to become his life. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree in finance and later a master's in accounting, fully prepared to go do something else entirely.
Plumbing kept him anyway. It turned out to be work that asked something of him every single day, a new problem in a new house with a new set of variables to figure out. He liked solving things. And it provided better than the other paths in front of him. So he stayed, and eventually he bought the business from the father-in-law who first handed him a wrench.
From there it became a family operation in the most literal sense. At one point Mike had seven of his brothers-in-law on the crew. Over the years he employed his own sons and sons-in-law too. Thirty years of plumbing put food on the table for ten children, and these days it allows him to spend increasingly more time with a fast growing group of his new favorite people in the world: grandchildren.
Today the crew is small on purpose. It is Mike and his nephew, Kaler Mehlberg, who is learning the business from the inside and will be taking it over in a few years. Kaler's previous years of experience in property management and maintenance made the transition to full-time plumbing much easier.
"Do exactly what you say you will do, for the price you say, and in the timeframe you say."
Mike Steele, Owner
That is the whole philosophy, and no, it's not a slogan he came up with for a website. It what thirty years in business taught him actually works. Keep your word and people can trust you. Put people first and the business takes care of itself. It is the reason customers call back years later, and the reason they hand your name to a neighbor.
Utah is home. Mike and Kaler live here, raise their families here, and work on their neighbors' houses. That being said, it tends to make them a little more careful about the work they leave behind.
THE NEXT GENERATION
Kaler Mehlberg
Kaler is Mike's nephew, and he's not just helping out. He's going on jobs with and without Mike, finishing his plumbing apprenticeship through Southwest Technical College, and learning the ins and outs of the business.
He and his wife, Tori, also have their hands full raising their two sons.
He's also lived in Southern Utah for many years and is learning the business from the ground up, the same way Mike did. And in a few years, he'll be running things.
IN THEIR WORDS