AIR CONDITIONING - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- General Manager for One Hour
Derek Cole is the General Manager for One Hour and has been with the Simmons organization since 2001. He has held various positions from installation, warehouse manager, office manager, comfort advisor, operations manager, to his current role as General Manager. Derek was named the Top 40 under 40 in the HVAC industry by the News magazine and featured in Entrepreneur Magazine Franchise Player Spotlight. Derek has also been seen on CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, Huffington Post, and Bloomberg Business sharing about One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning® and home comfort tips.​
F.H. Simmons, Jr. founded this company in 1953 as a flooring company. The demand for installing floor furnaces became so great that the company changed its name to Simmons Heating & Flooring in the early sixties. Around 1970 the company divested itself of the flooring business and became Simmons Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc.
In 1975, Ralph Parker, Jr. left Thermo Industries (now Carrier Enterprise) as a Territory Manager to join the company as a partner and commercial sales specialist. He bought the company in 1982 after Mr. Simmons retired.
Scott Cole is a professional engineer and Vice President of Simmons Heating.Cooling.Electrical, Inc. Scott worked at Simmons for two summers in installation before becoming a graduate of North Carolina State University in mechanical engineering in 2000. Scott worked as a mechanical engineer in Raleigh before returning to Simmons in 2005 full-time. Scott has a vast knowledge of all things mechanical and brings the unique perspective of book to real-world knowledge for anything HVAC service and installation related.