Daniel’s plan for Copper Plumbing and Drain ends with one of his kids in the driver’s seat. “Grow it and then give it to my youngest, let him run it,” he says. The name was picked with that kid in mind. “The reason I picked Copper Plumbing is because he’s a redhead and his hair is kind of like a copper color.”
His own role in that picture is the office. Once his youngest is ready to take the wheel, Daniel says, he’ll handle the paperwork.
That is some way off. For now Copper Plumbing and Drain, which he has run in Hesperia since 2023, is one plumber and an apprentice. The apprentice is a nephew who just turned 18. When Daniel’s son graduates from high school, he will start riding along too. Daniel says he has trained a lot of people over the years, but he has narrowed the field. “I’m trying to concentrate on the younger kids in my family just so I can give them another option other than college.”
He is in no hurry to add employees. “Once I’m ready to grow, then I’ll start hiring people, but not right now,” he says. “I’m training them because they’re going to take another two, three years before they get up and running.” Until then he calls the business “chill but busy.”
His pitch to his nephew is direct. “Hey, what do you want to do with your life?” he says he asks. “Getting into plumbing will definitely give you a head start as far as bringing in money quick.” It has worked on his relatives before. A younger brother went into plumbing, then a brother-in-law and another younger brother, both on the commercial side. “I guess I was first with the plumbing and then everybody’s like, oh okay, you’re doing good, so they started doing it too.”
Daniel has been plumbing since he was 23. He started in Costa Mesa, worked his way to Riverside and now works the high desert, from Hesperia out to Victorville, Apple Valley, Oak Hills and Adelanto. The company’s Facebook page lists a California C-36 plumbing contractor license. He worked for larger companies before going out on his own, and he says he has never been without a job.
He leans toward commercial work. “I prefer commercial because the jobs are a little difficult, and I like that,” he says. General contractors bring him in to do the plumbing on buildings under construction, including a school project in San Bernardino. He still takes residential calls, and as far as plumbing goes, he says yes to everything. “Nothing really scares me.”
One longtime customer with a background in medicine noticed that he lays his tools out in the order he will use them, the way the surgeons she had worked with did. Older customers in particular, Daniel says, like to see whether he knows what he is doing, and some would rather hire an older plumber than a younger one. It is an odd advantage for a man whose plan depends on teenagers learning the trade.
His phone rings all the time, he says, which makes it hard to spend time at home. When he falls behind, some customers get pushed back. “I try to get to the emergency ones, the ones that are like active leaks,” he says.
His work ethic came from his father, who worked two jobs to support seven children. The kids helped at night after school, cleaning buildings with him. “That’s where I kind of got my work ethic.”
He tells the relatives who followed him into plumbing the same thing he believes about himself: do good work, be trustworthy, and you won’t be without a job, whether or not a company is signing the checks. “If I quit a job somebody will hire me right away, or I’ll just work for myself, so I’m always working,” he says. “As long as I got my tools.”