Thank the Trades This Labor Day

Labor Day started as a holiday for exactly the kind of work that happens in and around this store every day: the trades. The people who show up with a truck full of tools, who know how to fix things most of us wouldn't know where to start on, who learned their craft from someone who learned it from someone before them. Around here, that isn't an abstract idea. It's half our regular customers. So this Labor Day, before you fire up the grill, we wanted to take a minute to say thank you to the plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs, mechanics, and builders who keep this town running, and to talk about where a little bit of that same spirit is headed this month.

Labor Day has been a federal holiday since 1894, created to recognize the contributions of American workers, particularly those in skilled trades and manufacturing. It's easy to let that history get lost under cookouts and back to school sales, but the trades this holiday was built around are still very much alive in Eastern North Carolina. They're the reason your air conditioning comes back on in August, your truck starts in the morning, and your house has working plumbing. It isn't glamorous work most days, but it's the kind of work a town can't run without, and it deserves more than one day a year of recognition, even if that's the day we set aside for it.

One thing we hear a lot from tradespeople who come through our doors: the hardest part of the job right now isn't the work itself, it's finding the next generation willing to learn it. Trade programs in local schools are one of the few places that gap gets closed early, giving students hands on experience before they ever pick up a wrench for a paycheck. A student who spends a year in an auto shop class learns more than how to change a belt or read a wiring diagram. They learn whether this kind of work is for them, long before they've committed to a career, and that head start matters.

That's part of why we started Support the Trades by Coltrain Cares this month. Every dollar a customer adds at checkout, we match dollar for dollar and it all goes to the Ayden-Grifton High School Auto Department to help send their students to this year's Skills Competition. It's a small way of investing in the next group of people who will keep this town's trucks running and lights on twenty years from now. If you've already added a dollar, thank you. If you haven't yet, there's still time before the campaign wraps up at the end of September.

If you've got a long weekend ahead of you, it's not a bad stretch to knock out something you've been putting off: a fence repair, a garage that needs organizing, a gate that's been sticking since spring. Swing by when you get a chance, and if you're not sure where to start, that's exactly what we're for.

However you spend your Labor Day, thank you from all of us at Coltrain to the tradespeople who make this town work, and thank you in advance to everyone who adds a dollar at checkout this month. It adds up faster than you'd think, and it goes toward something worth building.

The team at Coltrain Hardware & Garden Center