Every good tradesman I know is losing jobs to voicemail. Not because the work isn't there. Not because they're not good enough. Because the phone rings while they're halfway up a ladder, the customer gets dead air, and twenty minutes later they're ringing the next lad on Google.
I'm Michael. Wexford lad. Recession-era school leaver. The country had nothing going for the school-leavers of my year and I knew it on the way out the door.
Before the trades I had a stint in computer-networking and a run at game-dev — I was the tech kid in school before any of this. But by the time I was 18 there was nothing in front of a screen that was going to pay a wage in Wexford. So I went looking for a trade and got a start as a bricklaying apprentice.
Why I built Tradeflo
Five years on the trowel. Got my papers at 23. A qualified bricklayer with the rest of his working life mapped out in front of him. I thought I'd spend the next thirty years laying brick and that would be that.
Then a car accident took me out.
Why “built by a tradesman” matters
Head injury. Broken arm. Pins and plates. Months on the mend, and by the time I was back on my feet, my body had a long memory of what bricklaying had cost it. Another thirty years on the trowel wasn't on the table any more, no matter how much I wanted it to be.
So I followed the work. Wherever the big builds were going, I went and learned a new tool.
What I'm doing now
Intel Leixlip — formwork first, then the cleanroom fit-out in the same plant. AstraZeneca in Cambridge — ductwork. Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin — more ductwork on a site so big you needed a map to find your crew in the morning. Three years pouring formwork in Australia on commercial jobs that ran twelve-hour shifts. A few months on the solar tools out there before I came home.
Fifteen years on sites across Ireland, Europe and Australia. A CV most lads in this country don't get to write. And a back that knew exactly what it had cost.
— Michael Hallers, Founder, Tradeflo