Service Technician Profile: Tom Bolakowski, CompressAir

The passion and knowledge of experienced service technicians are a huge part of helping keep operations running with the reliability Sullair is known for.

CompressAir is a Sullair Authorized Distributor with more than 30 years of experience serving Northern Indiana and Chicagoland.

Meet Tom Bolakowski a 3-year veteran service technician from the CompressAir team.

What does a normal day look like for you?
Most days consist of preventive maintenance, but at any time I could be dispatched to an emergency call.

What’s your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of my job is diagnosis of the compressor. I enjoy being able to use the tools I’ve been taught to find what’s wrong with the machine.

What’s the most memorable service job you’ve done?
One of my favorite places to do preventive maintenance is Curly’s Inc. because I enjoy getting to see all the custom vehicles/bikes he’s working on. Every time I visit, he always has a unique project going.

Please share your weirdest day at work.
I would say the weirdest place I have ever been would be a hog production facility.

Please share your best day at work.
My best day at work was when one of our customers invited me out to lunch for pizza with him.

“We are all customer-service oriented. We know the equipment inside and out, and that makes it easier to explain to customers what happened, and how we fixed it.”

Why do you work on Sullair compressors?
CompressAir is a Sullair Authorized Distributor. I’ve attended many Sullair training courses to learn all the ins and outs of Sullair products, so I’m able to provide the very best for our customers when working in the field.

Why do you work for CompressAir?
I choose to work for CompressAir because I like the fact it is a family-owned business. By being family-owned, employees are treated like family.

CompressAir co-workers treat each other like family. Everyone genuinely cares about you becoming better in your career and is willing to help you in any way to get there. I can count on other service techs, Andy—our owner—or our service managers to answer the phone and help walk me through a situation if I’ve never come across it before.

Anything else you’d like to add?
While some jobs are easier such as quarterly filter changes and cleaning the controls—others are more complex, particularly new machine start-ups due to the detail-oriented steps in the process. We are all customer-service oriented. We know the equipment inside and out, and that makes it easier to explain to customers what happened, and how we fixed it. We also focus on customer relationships. Being able to work with our customers makes it easier to accomplish their needs.