Abel Ybarra goes to the house before his crew does.
Before a sale is settled at Aircules Air Conditioning Repair in San Antonio, he drives out himself. He meets the customer, takes the measurements and works out what the job involves. Only then does a technician go.
“I don’t just give the people the address and tell them to show up there,” Ybarra says. “No, I make sure I go make myself present. I go introduce myself to the customer.”
He is the company’s only owner, and he stays close to every job. “I’m involved in all that gets done,” he says. The measurements are the part he will not hand off. “I get all the measurement, get everything accurate, that way there’s less headaches for the customer.”
The visit protects his own people as well. Ybarra doesn’t want a customer, or one of his employees, arriving with no idea what the job holds. “I make sure that all those T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted,” he says.
The same habit shows up in scheduling. Aircules gives customers a two-hour arrival window, and Ybarra says the company always meets it. The shop runs Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
He has worked in the trade since 2004. The company’s Our Story page traces the path: a job at the counter of a supply house, then trade school, then an apprenticeship, and finally his own company in 2020. Aircules holds a Texas Class A air conditioning and refrigeration contractor license with the Combined endorsement, which covers both home cooling and commercial refrigeration. Repairs carry a 90-day warranty.
Ybarra lives near Woodlawn Lake, and the company treats that neighborhood as home ground. The streets around the park are lined with 1920s bungalows that were never built for central air. The work reaches well past it. Ybarra puts the usual range at about 50 miles.
Most of it is residential, roughly 85 percent home HVAC and 15 percent commercial refrigeration, he says. Refrigeration made up more of the work when he started, and he has steered away from it.
Customers notice the attention once he is inside the house. One reviewer recalled that he took off his shoes at the door so he wouldn’t track mud through the house.
Ybarra says the timing rule starts with him, and he expects the people who work for him to follow it. “I’ve always been punctual,” he says. “I don’t like to wait for people.”