Welcome 2026!
This is our 12th year doing the blog; our first post was 2/28/14. We had
a great 2025 at Colley Elevator so this is a quick recap of our year as we move
forward to the next. For me, it is a great way to see where we came from
and where we want to go. I’m lucky to have such wonderful people around as we enter
our 118th year as an independent elevator contractor. Thank you to
everyone that was part of our 2025 year!
Annual
reflection – This
year we saw our maintenance portfolio grow from 2522 to over 2671
elevators. Most of our new acquisitions for maintenance are 1
or 2 elevator buildings, though we had some 6-8 elevator groups come our way. We
are primarily using Alpha Elevator for our hydraulic controllers and MCE for
our traction elevators. We have spent
the year acquiring more elevator door equipment and have a large stock pile
of GAL, Dover, Westinghouse and Otis equipment in house at all times. In total
we bought approximately 110 door operators, 80+ fixture packages, 60+ power units
and a few complete packages[MEI & Canton]. We also purchased 30-40 cylinders from
ITI. All of this unfortunately came with some really
challenging shipping issues.
Colley Cares, our philanthropic
outreach, gave out over $12,000 to philanthropic organizations ranging from
substance abuse to food depositories. The Colley team came together to
help out Toys for Tots this fall/winter with a truck load of gifts to
help those in need.
Our own team is made up of incredible people with our average length of employment of 8.9 years. That's down from 10 years because we hired 9 new people in 2025. I’m proud to work side by side with everyone
here and am proud of the culture of openness at Colley that helps get everything done at a high level! Thank you to our coworkers, customers & suppliers for
being great! In 2025, we brought home the Best Contractor - North from the annual Elevator World Ellie award contest for a fifth time.
Post
reflection – Take a look at the great catalog of blog posts in 2025, go back
and read some.
1/13/25 –
Year in Reflection – Colley Elevator Blog – 2024 Review
2/2/25 –
Cold Weather and Elevators – Deep Freeze 2025
2/8/25 –
Elevator Picture Hall of Fame 2025 – Superbowl of Elevators
2/22/25 –
CAI – Community Association Institute – 43rd Annual Winter Expo –
Elevator
3/9/25 –
State of Illinois Fire Marshal Elevator Safety Review Board Meeting 3/9/25 –Door Lock Monitoring DLM
3/21/25 – End of Life/Obsolete Elevator Equipment – TAC 20/TAC 22
3/30/25 –
Hydraulic Elevator Modernization – Highland Park, IL
4/24/25 –
Elevator 101 – CAMICB CEU Approved Course – Morton Grove, IL
5/13/25 –
Notice of Obsolescence – Schindler Elevator – HPBNA Push Buttons
6/8/25 –
Information on State of Illinois Adoption of Elevator Code A17.1 2022 – Door Lock Monitoring
6/21/25 –
Hydraulic Elevator Modernization – Highwood, IL
8/4/25 –
Vote Colley Elevator for Elevator World's 2025 Best Contractor – North
8/21/25 –
NAEC Elevator Convention & Exposition – Houston, TX
9/15/25 –
Elevator 101 – Oak Brook, IL – 10/7/25
10/16/25 –
One Step Closer to Door Lock Monitoring in Illinois
10/26/25 – NAEC
76th Elevator Convention – Houston, TX
11/18/25 –
The Financial Implications of Door Lock monitoring (DLM)
Blog
reflection – 17
posts in 2025[that is a lot of words, pictures and time], over 266,000 views,
over 627,715 views in the blog’s history. New posts here down this
year as there never seems to be enough time in the day!
Most
popular blog posts of 2025
1.
Elevator Independent Service – 1,810 views
2.
Elevator Disconnect Auxiliary Contacts – Elevator Controller Emergency Battery Lowering –
Rescuevator – 1,680 views
3.
End
of Life/Obsolete Elevator Equipment – TAC 20/TAC 22 – 1,240 views
4.
Residential
Elevator Safety – Have Your Lift Inspected – 1,140 views
5.
Guide
for Elevator New Construction for General Contractors and Building Owners – 983
views
6.
End
of Life/Obsolete Elevator Equipment – Schindler Elevator – HPBNA push buttons –
860 views
7.
End
of Life/Obsolete Elevator Equipment – Dover DMC Elevator – 744 views
8.
The Financial Implications of Door Lock Monitoring – 660 views
9.
Schindler
330 Inverted Piston Roped Hydraulic Elevators MCP Update Notice – 651 views
10. Elevator Cable Rouge – 624 views
Elevator
resolution – This
year I would like everyone to not only look at their jobs but look at their
coworkers and help. When you help, you learn something new. EXPAND that mind!
FAID
inspections– We finally
have FAID inspections down – now something new.
DLM – We have door lock monitoring right around
the corner which is going to make the challenges we had with FAID look like a
walk in the park. We will have a
challenge with performing the tests and we will have a challenge getting our
buildings the right solution in a timely manner. Bombs Away!
2025
projects/relationships –
We have gotten ahead of a lot of our supplier challenges by stocking extra equipment, which
has been great. We have had a lot of good
fortune to work with great people on the supplier side and the customer side
and have received a lot of positive feedback about our team's hard work.
Competitive
market – Since the
sale of Suburban Elevator and the challenges with Urban Elevator we have seen a
lot of good opportunities for us as an Independent Contractor. Suburban Elevator and Urban Elevator were
the two giants in our market that have receded in 2025. We have seen the performance of OEMs continue
to decline in our market[low to mid rise], though we have seen some positive movement
from one of the OEMs.
Suppliers – We have had some great suppliers like
Innovation, Alpha, MEI and Canton perform great as usual. We met a new supplier who we didn’t ever
really get a chance to get to know, K Tech, they have been a great partner with
the visual communication. Most of the
consolidated companies have some great employees but it is hard to operate in
an impossible box.
If anyone is still reading – I ended the year in NYC and saw the Statue of Liberty, what a powerful symbol. We are a divided country. I encourage everyone to think for themselves, turn off your news station, put down your social media and think about how you got to where you are. The United States sure isn't perfect but we all can have a hand in making it better or talking about how it is getting worse. Do something good for someone else, give more than you get and you will get paid back 20 fold. And get your shingles vaccine.
Thank you
for everyone who took the time to read the blog. Work safe, getting
better, do great things and make our industry a better place for everyone. Much love in 2026.
