Willco Air Conditioning Joins Legacy Service Partners Platform

What happened

Willco Air Conditioning, Refrigeration & Heating Inc., a heating and cooling contractor in Branchville, New Jersey, has joined Legacy Service Partners, a home services platform based in Tampa, Florida. LSP announced on April 22, 2026, in a release datelined April 8, that it was welcoming Willco into its platform. The announcement gives no financial terms.

The company

Bill Cowan founded Willco in Sussex County in 1988, and the company has provided heating and cooling there ever since. Its territory now runs across North Jersey, from Branchville, Sparta and Blairstown to Morristown, Parsippany and Madison. The residential work covers furnaces, boilers, air conditioning, heat pumps and indoor air quality. The company sells Lennox, Mitsubishi and Energy Kinetics equipment, services all makes and models, and runs service seven days a week. On the commercial side, Willco installs through Direct Install, a New Jersey energy-efficiency program that covers upgrades such as HVAC equipment in existing small and mid-size commercial buildings.

Douglas Willis Jr. is Willco's owner and general manager. "What stood out most is their commitment to keeping Willco locally managed and community-focused," Willis said of LSP. "With LSP behind us, we're positioned to expand thoughtfully, invest in our team, and continue delivering the same trusted service our customers have relied on for decades."

The buyer

Jake Sloane, Frank Zhang and Rob Millock founded Legacy Service Partners in 2021. Gridiron Capital, an investment firm in New Canaan, Connecticut, made a growth investment in the company in January 2023, when it served 16 states with residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical services. The Willco announcement puts LSP at 19 states and 30 local brands.

Adam Taylor is LSP's chief executive; Millock held that title as recently as April 2025. "Partnerships like this are central to our strategy," Taylor said, describing that strategy as "supporting great local operators with the resources, systems, and shared expertise to help them grow." LSP has announced one more partner since Willco: Lunsford Air Conditioning and Heating of Milton, Florida, in July 2026.

LSP's other New Jersey brands

Willco is not LSP's first New Jersey company. In April 2025, NJ Pipe Doctor, a Woodbridge Township plumbing and HVAC company founded in 2019, joined what LSP called its other New Jersey partners, C&C and Dwyer Services. LSP said at the time that owner Ray Reyes and his local team would continue to manage and operate NJ Pipe Doctor with support from the platform. Counting Willco, LSP has now named four New Jersey brands in its announcements. Owners weighing a platform partnership can read our guide on selling an HVAC business to private equity.

What this means for North Jersey HVAC owners

Willco's owner framed the deal around keeping the company locally managed, and LSP said the same of NJ Pipe Doctor's owner a year earlier. Both New Jersey deals were presented that way. For HVAC owners, it is also the term worth pinning down in writing with a buyer like this: who holds the general manager role after closing, for how long, and which decisions stay with the local team rather than Tampa. A Sussex County contractor built over 38 years is now one of 30 brands, and how much of it stays local turns on those answers.

OffDeal is an advisory firm that helps lower-middle-market business owners sell with confidence. Reach out to learn more about our expertise with HVAC businesses in New Jersey.

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Source: Legacy Service Partners - https://legacyservicepartners.com/willco-joins-legacy-service-partners/