Watsco Closes Jackson Supply Acquisition, Adding 25 Sunbelt Branches
Terry Okafor
Master refrigeration tech and NATE-certified instructor who moonlights as the magazine's advice columnist. His 'Ask Big Terry' mailbag has been settling shop disputes and diagnosing mystery leaks since 2011.
Watsco has completed its acquisition of Jackson Supply Company, the HVAC/R distribution giant announced, folding in a regional player with $230 million in 2025 sales. The deal closed June 2, 2026, and adds 25 branch locations and about 5,000 contractor customers to Watsco's network.
Jackson's footprint runs across the Sunbelt: Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arizona. That's prime territory for cooling load, and it slots neatly into the map where Watsco already does much of its business.
Jackson keeps its name and its leadership. Jim Durrett stays on running the operation, which is Watsco's usual playbook. The company tends to buy strong local distributors and leave the local brand and relationships intact rather than repainting every branch overnight.
Why Watsco Keeps Buying
The North American HVAC/R distribution market is big and still remarkably fragmented, estimated at roughly $74 billion. Thousands of independent distributors serve local contractor bases, and no single player dominates. That fragmentation is exactly what makes it a target for consolidation.
Watsco, chaired and led by Albert H. Nahmad, has spent years assembling scale through acquisitions like this one. Add 25 branches here, a regional chain there, and the footprint compounds. Each deal brings more contractor accounts, more buying power with manufacturers, and more locations close to the job site.
For the contractor, distribution scale matters in ways that show up on a Tuesday morning. It's counter stock, credit terms, how fast a part gets to the truck, and whether the branch has the A2L-compatible equipment you now need to quote.
When your local supply house changes hands, ask early about account terms and whether your pricing tier carries over. Acquisitions usually preserve existing relationships, but confirming it beats finding out at the counter mid-install.
What the Deal Signals
The refrigerant transition and the shift toward higher-efficiency, higher-priced equipment have raised the stakes for distributors. Carrying the right A2L-compatible inventory, training counter staff, and financing bigger-ticket systems all favor operators with scale. Deals like Jackson are how the large distributors keep building that scale.
Rising equipment costs are part of the same story. Tariffs and input prices have pushed the price of the systems contractors buy, a trend we covered in our report on tariffs, appliance prices, and repair demand.
Expect the pattern to hold. As long as the market stays this fragmented, the biggest distributors have both the appetite and the currency to keep acquiring, and the independents holding strong regional books will keep getting the call.
Sources
- Watsco, Inc. "Watsco Completes Acquisition of Jackson Supply Company." watsco.com
- Watsco, Inc. / GlobeNewswire. "Watsco Completes Acquisition of Jackson Supply Company" (June 2, 2026). globenewswire.com