"My dad used to say a plumber's name has to mean something in his town, because his name is the only marketing he can afford. We've been the Mercer name in Charlotte plumbing since 1978. We don't intend to stop now." — Travis Mercer, owner, master plumber
Wendell's StartThe original truck (1978)
Wendell Mercer apprenticed at Charlotte Plumbing & Heating in the early 1970s, when the city was still small enough that every working plumber knew every other working plumber on a first-name basis. He worked under a master named Roy Caldwell for six years, learned the trade the way it was taught then — slowly, on the truck, by being handed the wrong wrench until you figured out the right one.
In the spring of 1978 Wendell decided to go independent. He was thirty-one years old. His wife Patricia was pregnant with what would turn out to be Travis. The down payment for his first truck — a used 1978 Ford F-150, blue, with one bad door hinge — came from an $1,800 loan from his father-in-law, who ran a small electrical contracting business out of Belmont. Wendell paid him back over eighteen months, in cash, in envelopes, the way that family loaned money in 1978.
He hand-painted "MERCER PLUMBING · CHARLOTTE" on the driver-side door himself. The letters were uneven. He never repainted them. When he eventually retired the truck in 2002 — when the bad door hinge finally gave up the ghost — Travis pulled the door panel off and hung it in the shop. It's still there. The lettering is still uneven.
For the first four years Wendell worked alone. He answered his own phone at the kitchen table. He kept a yellow legal pad in the glove box where he wrote down every job, every materials cost, every dollar earned. Patricia did the bookkeeping at night. By 1982 there was enough work for a second pair of hands.
Adding The Second Truck1986 — and the first commercial account
Wendell hired his first apprentice, a man named Curtis Williams, in 1982. Curtis stayed with Mercer Plumbing for twenty-six years. The second truck — a 1986 Chevy C-10 — went onto the road that fall. Curtis drove it. Wendell took the F-150.
The first commercial account came in 1991 from Eastover Country Club. Wendell had quoted a clubhouse-bathroom remodel against three other contractors and come in third on price. The maintenance director called him back three weeks later — the cheapest bidder had quoted parts that weren't to code, the second cheapest had walked off after the demo phase. Could Wendell come finish it? He could. Eastover has been a Mercer Plumbing customer ever since.
The BBB accredited Mercer Plumbing in 2002. The certificate still hangs in the front office, behind Diane's desk. There are no annotations, no asterisks, no qualifications. Just the year and the rating. It's been an A+ every year since.
Travis Takes Over2014 — and what hasn't changed
Travis Mercer grew up in the truck cab. He rode along with Wendell starting at age seven, sitting on a folded sleeping bag because the bench seat was too tall for him. He learned to read pipe-fitting catalogs the way other kids learned to read baseball-card statistics. He took the master-plumber exam in 2003, at twenty-eight, on the second try (he failed it the first time on a piping-isometric question he still calls "rigged"). He came back home and went to work on the same trucks.
In 2014, Wendell — sixty-eight, knees giving out from forty-six years on concrete shop floors — turned the keys over. He still comes by the shop on Tuesdays and Fridays. He still answers if someone calls him directly. He does not, at the family's insistence, climb into the truck bay anymore.
Travis runs the company today the way his father ran it: five trucks, eight techs (Andre, Marcus, David, Curtis Jr. — yes, the same family — Hector, Wesley, Antonio, and Sam the apprentice), and Diane Mercer (Travis's wife) on the books. The five trucks are named in the shop by their license-plate numbers, but each tech is permanently assigned to one. Marcus drives Truck 3. David drives Truck 5. Sam is currently riding along on Truck 1 with Curtis Jr., who is teaching him the same slow way Roy Caldwell taught Wendell fifty-two years ago.
The fleet has not gotten bigger in eleven years. That is deliberate. Travis has been pitched by the consolidators ("private equity is buying up trade-service shops; we'd like to give you an exit") more times than he can count. He has not returned any of those calls.
What Hasn't ChangedThe three things we refuse to do
There are three things Mercer Plumbing does not do, and has not done in forty-seven years.
We do not dispatch a tech who has been with the company less than two years to an unaccompanied residential job. Sam the apprentice will not be in your house alone until he has ridden along for twenty-four months with a master. That is how Wendell trained Travis. That is how Travis is training Sam.
We do not quote sewer-line work over the phone without an inspection. The cost of a sewer-line repair varies between $1,400 and $12,000 depending on what we find with the camera. Anyone who quotes you a number for that job before they have looked at it is lying to you. We will tell you the diagnostic fee ($69) and the inspection method (camera) before we leave the driveway. The repair quote comes after we have seen what we are quoting.
We do not charge a "trip fee" on top of a diagnostic. The diagnostic is the diagnostic. If you book the repair, the $69 is credited toward it. If you don't, the $69 is what you pay. There is no surprise add-on, no fuel surcharge, no "we drove farther than we thought we would" line item.
"We have been called twice in 47 years for jobs we'd worked on a decade earlier. Both times the homeowner had taken a sledgehammer to the wrong wall. Neither time did we charge for the diagnostic visit." — Travis Mercer
The crewThe people who answer the phone
Curtis Williams Jr. — the son of the man Wendell hired second — is now our senior tech. He's been with us nineteen years. Marcus Bell handles most of the day-shift residential calls. David Trujillo is the calmest person you will ever meet on a 2am sewer-backup call; he's been a plumber for thirty-one years and a Mercer plumber for the last fourteen. Andre Washington answers the after-hours line on rotation with Marcus and David. Hector Vasquez specializes in tankless water-heater installs (he has the manufacturer training certifications stapled to a bulletin board in the shop). Wesley Cain handles commercial accounts. Antonio Reyes runs Truck 2 on drain-cleaning calls. Sam Kennedy is the apprentice; he started in 2025 fresh out of CPCC's plumbing program.
Diane Mercer runs the front office. She has been the bookkeeper since 2009 and the only person who answers the office phone from 7am to 6pm Monday through Friday. She knows every customer by name. She remembers the addresses. If you call back six months later about a follow-up on something Travis quoted, Diane will pull the file before you finish saying which neighborhood you live in.
What's nextThe next forty-seven years
Travis and Diane have three children. The oldest, Wendell-the-younger (named for his grandfather), is fourteen and has spent the last two summers helping in the shop. He has not yet been allowed in a customer's house. His grandfather Wendell — eighty-one now, walking with a cane, still sharp — drops by on Tuesdays and Fridays to remind everyone that the apprenticeship is the long part, and that nobody is making the boy into a plumber before he wants to be one.
We do not know yet whether Mercer Plumbing will see a third generation. We know we are still here. We know the trucks still answer. We know the family name still means something in Charlotte plumbing. That is the part of the job we can promise.