4 Bold Predictions for Plumbing and HVAC Deliveries in 2025

No one can predict the future with total accuracy, but there are a few things about 2025 that we know for sure. For instance, we know that starting in 2025 the EPA is phasing out Freon in favor of more environmentally friendly alternatives. The consensus is that this is going to have a major impact on the price of new HVAC installations starting early next year.

There’s plenty more that we won’t know about until it’s already happening, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make informed predictions about where the industry is headed—especially with regard to last mile deliveries. After all, it’s never too early to start preparing for the coming year, and the more foresight you have about the challenges and opportunities that are likely to crop up in the plumbing and HVAC industry, the more effective you’ll be at preparing.  

Sustainability initiatives will continue—creating cost pressures in the short term

Like we mentioned above, changing EPA regulations are going to have an immediate impact on the industry starting as soon as the new year kicks off. This is going to create fairly immediate cost pressures as HVAC installations become potentially more expensive—and distributors are going to have to navigate this in terms of how and where they pass costs off to their customers. 

Simply put, this will make delivery efficiency more important than ever. Your ability to keep additional costs down by ensuring you’re getting the most out of your fleet and technician capacity is going to be more important than ever.

At the same time, sustainability initiatives aren’t going to be limited to things like changing regulations. HVAC and plumbing suppliers are going to continue to face new requests and demand for new types of services. Heat pump installations are likely to become more common, for instance. The businesses that are able to adapt to new demands quickly are going to be in the best position to succeed. 

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SaaS technology will continue to give mid-sized businesses an edge

Adapting to a changing marketplace isn’t just about one thing—but it’s hard to overstate how much having the right technology can help. Luckily, SaaS technology has been lowering the barriers to entry for enterprise-strength software for the past several years, and in 2025 we expect its impact to be felt even more strongly in plumbing and HVAC deliveries. 

What’s driving this trend? A lot of cloud technology adoption will come from the kinds of mid-sized businesses that in previous eras would have lacked the IT infrastructure—and potentially the spending power—to adopt state-of-the-art technology. Because businesses no longer have to run and maintain servers on site, they can adopt sophisticated solutions without dedicating resources that they don’t have. 

This means that smaller businesses in the HVAC and plumbing space are increasingly able to position themselves to compete against their larger competitors. In 2025, we expect even more businesses to seek out a competitive edge in this way. Cloud-based delivery technology can give businesses easy access to smarter route optimization, improved customer experience, and even things like streamlined pallet scanning that help them compete against larger enterprises. 

Consolidation in the construction and building supplies industry more broadly continues apace will help drive this trend as well, but the end result will be a higher proportion of HVAC and plumbing suppliers leverage cloud-based technology.  

Distributors will stay laser-focused on customer experience

Consumer delivery expectations have changed significantly in the past few years, and those expectations are increasingly not limited to areas like furniture and appliances. The foreperson at the job site you’re delivering to? They’ve almost certainly received a scheduled delivery to their home in the past couple years, and they’re no doubt wondering why they can’t receive the same level of service when they get deliveries in a professional capacity. 

This is something we’ve seen creeping in across different industries for a while now, but we expect that in 2025 the focus on customer experience in plumbing and HVAC will be greater than ever. 

What will that look like in practice? There are a few ways we see distributors working to provide customers a stellar experience:

• Providing more flexibility in terms of scheduling deliveries 
• Turning last-minute delivery requests around more quickly
• Provide real-time delivery tracking via a dedicated widget
• Keeping customers in the loop with frequent branded updates
• Enabling two-way communication so that customers can easily reach out for information or assistance
• Providing instant delivery receipts with proof of delivery so customers have a record of the delivery

This is another area where having the right technology will be a big help. Sending out delivery notifications by hand, for instance, simply isn’t going to scale—it would require an army of dedicated call center workers for businesses with even a few technicians. The ability to automate and streamline customer experience will be critical, as will the ability to generate routes quickly in order to respond to last-minute requests. 

Plumbing and HVAC suppliers will have to expect the unexpected!

It’s like the Scout Motto says: be prepared! We know, that’s easier said than done. But one of the things we can be absolutely certain about in 2025 is that we’ll be hit with events and challenges that none of us saw coming. 

Simply put, you’ll need to be ready to adapt to changing circumstances. 

At first glance, that advice might seem so vague as to be completely useless—but in point of fact there are a lot of steps that businesses in this sector can take to make themselves more flexible and more adaptable to change. Here are just a few:

• Opt for smarter route optimization: Flexibility starts on the micro-level. When you can update your routes quickly and easily—even at the very last minute—you can keep costs down and delight your customers even when customer demands threaten to cause chaos. Here, AI and machine learning can offer valuable methods to increase ETA accuracy and help you get the most out of your capacity. 
• Prioritize visibility: How are you going to respond when there’s a sudden surge in demand for greener heating and cooling methods? Are you in a position to offer an HVAC as a service model if the market calls for it? The only way to answer questions like these is with a high degree of logistics visibility. When you can easily answer questions about your logistics operations—and your last mile delivery operations in particular—you can respond more quickly and effectively to changing conditions. 
• Focus on your technology ecosystem: Visibility works on numerous different levels. When your drivers and technicians are out on the road, visibility means knowing where they are, where they’re headed, and what their status is. When you take a step back and think about how your network is planned, visibility means being able to instantly visualize how you’re utilizing your capacity week in and week out. To get to this level of understanding, your technology stack needs to work together closely. Your last mile software, your ERP, and other systems all need to integrate seamlessly. 

2025 may feel like it’s still a ways off, but in the grand scheme of things it’s right around the corner. By preparing now for the HVAC and plumbing industry landscape that we’re likely to see in the next year, distributors can position themselves to beat out the competition and keep their customers happy—no matter what the new year throws at them.