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The First to specialize in Assisting Sprayfoam Contractors
My Name is Robert Cockerell
I have been in the Sprayfoam Industry since 2008 but first let me give you some background on me.
I was born in Freestone county, Texas where I lived until I joined the US Navy. While in the Navy I served onboard the USS Roosevelt CVN-71 as an Avionic Electronics Technician. In this role I supported the F/A 18 Hornet and the F-14 Tomcat with circuit board level electronic repairs. I did this from ‘95 to ’99. During this time I met my lovely wife, Melody, and I’m still married to her to this day, now with 3 wonderful children.
When I left the Navy I went to Charlotte, NC for about a year working on circuit boards that did a wide variety of functions. We left Charlotte and moved back to Dallas, Texas where I worked for Nikon Corporation installing and maintaining the laser systems that makes processor chips. I finally got tired of working inside so I left there and bounced around a bit from driving an 18 wheeler for North American Van Lines to hauling road rock with an end dump and working out in the oilfield with safety equipment and rental equipment.
During this time my father, Donnie, started doing insulation services for local contractors in the county where I grew up. The contractors finally convinced my father to give Sprayfoam a go in 2006. In 2008 his lead sprayer was leaving him to pursue other dreams at that time. He contacted me and asked if I would come work for him and run his rig. Ultimately I wound up running the operation side of his business from repair, to scheduling and spraying. I left my fathers business in 2015 and went to work for another company a few hours away. At the time I thought I was a good sprayer until I saw the lead sprayer at the new company. I quickly realized that I had a lot of learning to do. Afterwards I joined SFWW and had a whole new level of quality to strive for. At this company I became the go-to man for keeping the equipment up and running for all crews and also held operations manager for a time.
My boss at this company was getting tired of one of the spray rigs going down frequently so I offered to buy the rig from him, and he graciously allowed me to buy it. Once I bought the rig I had no true plan of action other than the fact that I didn’t want to compete with my father in the area that we live in (4 companies within 30 miles of each other for about 60k people), so I did the only thing that I thought was prudent at the time. I offered my services as a gun for hire with my own rig and helper. Speaking of helper, that would be my son, Wade, I could not be doing this without him helping me along the way.
At first other contractors were iffy to use someone like me because of the advertising that is typically on trailers. Luckily for them the only thing my trailer had on it was Sprayfoam Insulation, no company name nor phone number. With this in mind various contractors slowly started calling me to help them get caught up with work when they were overbooked or if one of their rig went down for an extended period of time.
Work has steadily increased to the point that I realized that the used rig that I had was not big enough to help all the people calling me, so I contacted Robin Pence at Intech. She and her wonderful team assisted me in customizing a rig that is capable of servicing contractors of a wide variety. The centerpiece of my new rig is my PMC PHD40 with 400 feet of hose. With that I am capable of doing open cell foam, closed cell foam, and roofing foams. It is capable of much more but I do not have the experience in those to tackle them yet.
Doing what I do now takes me from one end of the country to the other. For example, in January of 2019 I was in Florida spraying, and in January of 2020 I was in Seattle, Washington spraying, with lots of stops all over Texas and Oklahoma. I enjoy knowing that I do my job to the best of my abilities and that I am helping these contractors out of a bind. It is a hard job being away from home most of the time, but it is well worth it.
