Built By the Trade, for The Trade

Commercial trades look very different today than it did twenty years ago.

Systems are more advanced. Vehicles are more complex. Schedules are tighter. Customer expectations are higher. And technicians are expected to move faster, safer, and with fewer mistakes than ever before.

But the fundamentals of the job haven’t changed.

Technicians still need quick access to tools. They still need vehicles that support — not slow down — their workflow.

Wes Arnot, General Manager of Packd Upfit, has seen this evolution from both sides of the trade.

Before stepping into manufacturing and upfitting, Wes spent years in and around HVAC. He experienced firsthand how small inefficiencies — unsecured tanks, awkward layouts, searching for tools — compound over time.

I remember starting as an HVAC technician 20 years ago. My van was basically a rolling junk drawer,” said Wes. “You’d open the side door and hope nothing fell out. Tanks were just strapped wherever they fit, fittings were in coffee cans, and you spent half your day digging for parts you knew you had. No tablets, no apps—just a clipboard, a stack of invoices, and a lot of back-and-forth to the shop.”

Wes providing a tour of Packd products in an HVAC set up

Later, working in upfitting, Wes saw the same friction repeated across fleets and across commercial trades.

That insight shaped Packd’s philosophy: reduce friction in the shop and reduce friction in the field.

Rather than designing generic storage, Packd focuses on how technicians actually work — secure storage, durable materials, intuitive layouts, and systems that can scale across fleets.

“Having seen HVAC from both sides — on the tools and in upfitting — you recognize where the real friction is,”  says Wes Arnot. “The goal isn’t to add more. It’s to design smarter.”

As trades continue to evolve, design decisions rooted in lived experience matter more than ever.

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