By David MacDonald
When I asked Wayne why Doubl-Kold has both national and international appeal, he was quick to answer: “We strive to be the business where you can get all your industrial refrigeration needs in one place. We provide engineering design and installation for refrigeration projects directly to customers like warehouses and packers for fresh fruits and vegetables, food distribution warehouses, and seafood processors. We also provide engineering services for other engineering firms. We can design and build almost anything our clients need.”
“We strive to be the business where you can get all your industrial refrigeration needs in one place.”
The Doubl-Kold team offers full installation of all their industrial refrigeration systems, service on all installed systems, in-house programming, panel construction, they are an UL panel shop, and service on all computer control systems, and retail parts for hands-on clients. That being said, Doubl-Kold provides training for all products and equipment they sell. “The Process Safety Management [PSM] services we provide are innumerably beneficial to our clients,” Wayne remarked. “The nearly 20,000 square feet facility we’re in now is on a five acre lot. We have offices, a classroom, an inventory area, a service shop, and a control shop. In the classroom, our engineers often conduct tutorials and we do regular HAZMAT training. We’ve even brought in outside vendors to conduct seminars for our clients and staff. We’re always looking to go that extra mile. ”
Wayne believes in honestly representing his products, which is why Doubl-Kold’s primary suppliers are American companies – and several of those have worldwide exposure and sales. All of our other primary suppliers are based here in the States. While some of these companies do have factories abroad, they’re homegrown businesses, like us,” Wayne explained. “And like us, when Baltimore AirCoil is selling us condensers or Hansen Technologies is selling us relief valves and isolation valves, they’re trying to give us more than their competitors – that’s the spirit of American business. A perfect ‘For instance’ would be our twenty-plus year business relationship with Van Amburg Enterprises, a local Yakima metal fabrication company. They’ve provided all our sheet metal needs, fabricating and installing. Even though we’ve established a working relationship with them years ago, they do every job like they’re making a first impression. That’s what we aspire to as well.”
For nearly forty years, Doubl-Kold has been living up to its name for one simple reason: it’s always been helmed by tradesmen. In 1998, Wayne and his equal partners Ken Adams, Vice President of Sales, and Russ Staples, Vice President of Construction, purchased Doubl-Kold, Inc. from Jack Staples and Terry Ingham who founded the company 20 years earlier. “We were actually all employees of theirs, so growing the brand wasn’t something we had to do from scratch,” Wayne explained. “We became Northwest Refrigeration Contractors, Inc. doing business as Doubl-Kold. We stayed in the original location for about ten years, which was about 8,000 square feet on two acres.”
“Our Ozone systems are the perfect testament to our R and D.”
Staying in touch with his roots is at the heart of Wayne’s business acumen. “Ken’s father, Jim Adams, was actually my first employer when I graduated high school in 1978,” he reminisced. “He owned a local company called Refrigeration & Services, Inc. Then I served an apprenticeship with the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union Local 598 and worked for several contractors until 1987 when I went to work for Doubl-Kold Inc. My apprenticeship really gave me a boost to explore my other interests and broaden my horizons. I have also had training in electronics, compressor repair, pump repair, and business management. In addition to all that, I have both electrical and electrical administrator licenses, a Class 5 Boiler license, mechanical administrator licenses in Alaska and California, and I serve as trustee of several unions’ ERISA trusts. Through the years, I’ve had various jobs and duties through out my career before becoming a partner in Doubl-Kold. I delivered parts to job sites, did inventory control; I was an apprentice steamfitter, a welder, foreman, service tech, project manager, and superintendent. Between Ken, Russ, and myself, I don’t think there’s anything around here we haven’t taken on ourselves at one time or another.”
The Renaissance men foundation of Doubl-Kold is invaluable to both the in-house staff and the consumer. “I don’t know if there is anything that a customer would need that they couldn’t find at Doubl-Kold,” Wayne told me with gusto. Any curve balls thrown in the direction of the Doubl-Kold meets a bat held by more than 60 employees, half of whom have been stepping up to the plate for the company for 10 years or more. “We probably have collectively between two and three hundred years of experience at Doubl-Kold. The speed we can complete a project is second to none. Our research and development is also a force. We currently have four engineers, three with PEs. We have three draftsmen and four people who work as Sales Engineers – including myself. While these particular people may not have engineering degrees, they have enough knowledge and experience to design systems. If they have very specific or unusual circumstances they will enlist the help of the engineering staff,” Wayne said.
One such project that involved the entire staff was what came to be known as Doubl-Kold’s Ozone Environmental Solutions. “Our Ozone systems are the perfect testament to our R and D,” Wayne insisted. According to Doubl-Kold.com, “Ozone is a strong naturally occurring disinfectant that with the proper exposure time and levels has been found to significantly reduce mold, bacteria, viruses, and yeast growth on foods.” Research and development of the first generation of Ozone Environmental
Solutions began in 2005.
“Our ability to control our Ozone systems with our computer control system is second to none,” Wayne explained. “We can control, on the air side, into the parts per billion. The Ozone systems are also available for water applications after our successful development of an Ozone spray bar and water application concept.
We may not always have the lowest costs in the competitive bidding world, but we feel we always provide the best value when you purchase from Doubl-Kold. We also offer controlled atmosphere equipment – and service when requested. These are not are primary business focus, but do complement our base business. We’ve focused in this way because the needs and requirements of our clients are changing – and we’re always going to meet their changing needs. How fruit is stored today is so much different than it was when I started in 1978. In the apple industry alone, we used to harvest for about six weeks, it took six to 10 days to fill a room. Everything was stored at the same temperature and if the temperature fluctuated three degrees or so in storage, that was fine. We stored those crops for about six months and generally we had three to five varieties in the Northwest. Today, harvest lasts, depending on weather, three to four months. We fill rooms in one to two days. We have to know about different varieties of apples as they need to be stored at different, specific temperatures. We have to be aware of shrinkage, we have to control within a tenth of a degree, and we have to be able to provide graphs to prove storage temperatures for export markets, and we hold product up to twelve months.
And we have more varieties in storage than can be imagined by most people, maybe 20 to 30 types – and there are more being developed every year. That’s just one of many examples.”
“We have to know the product, method of desired cooling, timeframe to reduce the temperature, desired temperature, product load,” he continued. “We then pick the equipment that best fits the criteria. So, for Doubl-Kold to continue to be successful in this changing environment, we have to reach out, research, and repeat. That’s the recipe for understanding the needs of the customers and the market. We had to partner with manufactures that were forward thinking. We had to be willing and ready to change methods and processes as needed. We needed to be able to adapt.”
It’s clear to the competition that Doubl-Kold is ahead of the curve in every race. The Doubl-Kold team has provided their expertise to compressor manufactures, evaporator manufactures, valve manufactures, and condenser manufactures to resolve issues and improve design – and their reputation continues to precede them on all fronts. “We are currently working on a distribution center for fruit in the Wenatchee, WA area that has close to 400,000 square feet of refrigerated space all under one roof,”
Wayne said. “We continue to look for new opportunities, both locally and abroad. We feel that our biggest potential is in our Computer Control for Refrigeration systems. Marketing these systems in areas where we don’t currently have the opportunity to provide full refrigeration systems is paramount.”
The user-friendly, Windows-based .NET program that is Doubl-Kold’s Computer Control system, for refrigeration systems, is, according to Doubl-Kold.com, “one of a few only in-house computer controls providers that are within the same company as the refrigeration part in the Industrial Refrigeration industry.” The user-friendly layout on the operator interface computer, which is customizable, is both graphically and textually informative. “We’re a unique company that produces unique products because of our collective experiences,” Wayne explained. “In the ‘80s, most people in the construction industry had some tough times. For some time, I worked directly for a fruit warehouse and during that period I learned a lot about storing fresh fruit. My partners have brought their expertise and their experiences to the table, as have all the other people who make up the Doubl-Kold team. The day that listening and reaching out doesn’t work for us, we’ll change our strategy.”