From locomotives to HVACR classes at GTCC, Chad Tinko has never faced a challenge too large to tackle

“My instructors Jeff Underwood and Chris Sizemore still reach out and ask me how I’m doing. I tell them they literally changed the course of my life. I wouldn’t have the business; the life I have without them. They helped me be where I needed to be.”

Chad Tinko spent two decades helping build locomotives. Today, he’s helping build careers.

Along the way he’s moved South, graduated from Guilford Technical Community College, run at least three successful companies, and is building a 40-acre farm with his wife.

But his most rewarding mission has been guiding air conditioning, heating, and refrigeration (HVACR) workers through the challenging North Carolina state certification program via his test preparatory company, Triad One Contracting Seminars. And it all grew from his HVACR classes at GTCC.

“In North Carolina, you need 4,000 hours or two years in the field to sit for your HVACR license,” explained Tinko. “Most of my students have never taken a collegiate course, have never been to college, and now they are going to take a state exam requiring 13 books that require engineering and theory, and they don’t have any of that.

“The test is set up for 27 percent pass rate or a 73 percent fail rate.”

Less than a decade ago, Tinko had never heard of GTCC, much less the pass-fail rate for a North Carolina certification process. He was 42 years old and entrenched in a successful career helping General Electric build locomotives in Erie, Pennsylvania. It was, he said, a well-paying job that provided a comfortable lifestyle for him and his family.

In 2015, though, GE announced layoffs of more than 2,000 workers in the Erie facility. The ever-positive Tinko decided quickly this could be an opportunity, not a hardship.

“I wasn’t going to be laid off. I had seniority. But my daughter was going to graduate (high school) and I wanted a move,” he said. “I actually went to the union hall and wrote a proposal, that if my leaving meant saving someone else’s job, I’d do it. But I wanted benefits, I wanted my move paid for and for my associate degree to be paid for.”

The company agreed to the plan and Tinko headed South to begin a new life. His sister lived in Danville, Virginia, and he stayed with her while searching for a college and a new hometown. He settled on GTCC and Kernersville, and soon was off to the first day of classes with a bit of trepidation.

“My biggest fear, honestly, was that I didn’t want to be the old man out. I didn’t know what to expect,” said Tinko. “I remember the first day I walked in and looked around. I was the median age. I realized really quick I had a leg up on everyone around me because I had a boatload of experience.”

Tinko chose GTCC’s air conditioning, heating and refrigeration program for career security.

“Everything else in my life had been shipped overseas, but I knew everyone had to have heat and cooling,” said Tinko. “I had worked on big stuff, locomotives weigh over 400,000 pounds, so I wasn’t overwhelmed by the program, but I had to adjust myself as far as studies. I had a lot more to prove to myself than a lot of the others (in the program).”

Tinko excelled in the classroom and graduated at the top of his class in 2018 with an HVACR associate degree, with he says, the help of an amazing group of instructors.

“My instructors Jeff Underwood and Chris Sizemore still reach out and ask me how I’m doing. I tell them they literally changed the course of my life. I wouldn’t have the business; the life I have without them. They helped me be where I needed to be.”

Tinko was soon back in the classroom, teaching night classes at GTCC while working a full-time HVACR job. He eventually decided it was time to take the North Carolina state HVACR certification test but considered a prep course before the test would help. That prep class turned out to be another life-changing event.

“I took the course, and it didn’t make a lot of sense in my mind. Even though it’s an open book test, it is timed, and if you don’t know how to navigate books, you run out of time,” said Tinko. “Most students, even if they have been to college, have no idea how to create a strategy for what’s in front of them.”

A year later Tinko was applying his ideas to the prep class after buying the company.

“I went in and took the course and later that year I got a call … a phone number I didn’t recognize kept calling. Finally, they left a message. It was the guy who owned the testing company, and he wanted to sell.”

Tinko has grown the business, especially one-on-one classes with people who have been unable to pass the test in one or more attempts. GTCC remains a big part of Tinko’s life.

“I’m a huge advocate for continuing education,” said Tinko, who also sits on a GTCC advisory board and works with the college’s SkillsUSA competition. “I’ll quickly send one of my students back to GTCC or their local community college.”

For more information on GTCC’s HVACR program, visit gtcc.edu/academics/academic-programs/programs/manufacturing-transportation-construction/air-conditioning-heating-refrigeration-technology.php.