/ Our Story

Why we built Durham Pro

Durham Pro Appliance Repair is a local team based in the Durham region of Ontario — serving Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, Pickering and Bowmanville. We were founded in 2024 by appliance technicians who'd spent years inside larger GTA repair operations, and decided to build something different for the east side of the region.

Years before the founding

Before Durham Pro existed, the technicians who started it were already in homes across the GTA — working under the names of large repair companies that covered everything from Burlington to Bowmanville from one west-end dispatch center. We learned the appliances. We learned the brands. We also learned the limits of running an east-end service area from sixty kilometers away.

Most of the team came up the same way: trade school, apprenticeships, years of hands-on work across hundreds of brands and thousands of houses. By the time we left, between us we'd logged more service calls in the Durham region than we could count — Pickering condos, Whitby new builds, Bowmanville bungalows, Ajax townhomes. We knew the area. The companies we worked for didn't.

The moment we decided to leave

The pattern that finally pushed us out was the same one we'd been watching for years. A homeowner in Oshawa or Whitby calls a big-name appliance repair company. The dispatcher slots them three or four days out. On the day, the technician drives in from Mississauga or Etobicoke — sometimes arriving outside the booked window, sometimes not at all. The customer waits, takes the day off, and the appliance sits broken in the meantime.

It wasn't a bad-tech problem. The technicians driving from the west end were doing the best they could with the route assignments they were given. It was a structural problem: a company can't keep promises in Durham if its trucks start the morning in Etobicoke. We decided that if anyone was going to serve this region properly, the company had to be built here — not stretched into it.

How we started in 2024

Durham Pro began in early 2024 with a small group of technicians, a couple of vans, and a list of parts suppliers we already knew from years on the job. We didn't take outside investors. We didn't build a call center. The first phone number was answered by the people doing the repairs.

The decision from day one was to stay narrow and stay local. We didn't open a Toronto office. We didn't take bookings outside the Durham service area. The whole point of starting the company was to be the option that's actually based here — and we weren't going to repeat the mistake of stretching too thin.

Knowing the region we serve

Local doesn't just mean a Durham address on the website. It means knowing that older bungalows in Bowmanville have plumbing and venting quirks that newer Ajax developments don't. It means knowing that Pickering condos run heavy on stacked laundry units most general technicians refuse to touch. It means knowing which Whitby subdivisions were built out in the Samsung and LG era versus the older Whirlpool and Maytag stretch.

Most of our technicians live in the region they serve. The person quoting your washer has driven the street it's on. When we say we'll be there in the morning, we know what "the morning" actually looks like getting from one end of Durham to the other — because we live the same traffic and the same routes.

Who we are today

Durham Pro is still small, still owner-operated, and the people who started it are still the ones running it day to day. Every technician on the team is licensed and insured, and gas-certified for the categories that require it — most ovens, ranges and dryers connected to natural gas.

The technician who quotes your repair on the phone is the same one who shows up at your door. Not a subcontractor in an unfamiliar uniform. If something needs to be sorted out after the visit, you call the same number — and you usually speak to the same person who was at your house.

Where we're going from here

We're not planning to be the biggest appliance repair company in Ontario, and we have no interest in opening a Toronto office or franchising the name. The point of Durham Pro was to be a small, accountable team built around this region — and that's what we intend to stay.

If the company grows, it grows by adding more technicians here, in Durham. Not by stretching the service area into places we don't actually know.

That's the short version of the story. If your fridge, washer, dryer, dishwasher, stove or oven is acting up — call us. We're already in the neighbourhood.