Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Greg Hamilton Masters Auto Glass and So Much More
Editor’s Note: In honor of Black History Month, GlassBYTEs is featuring African American auto glass professionals.
Greg Hamilton quite literally built his company from the ground up. He began his auto glass career with Glasspro before opening his own business, Hamilton Auto Glass in Charleston, South Carolina.
Hamilton got into the auto glass business by being at the right place at the right time. His mother worked for an insurance company in the 90s, and one day while visiting, Paul Heinauer walked in. Heinauer, then-owner and president of Glasspro in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, happened to be looking for employees. Hamilton and Heinauer struck up a conversation that resulted in Hamilton applying for a job at Glasspro.
Hamilton began his job there in 1996 and stayed there until 2010, when he decided to found Hamilton Auto Glass.
“I wanted to create a business for myself and to one day be an entrepreneur and own my own shop,” he said.
His vision for the business was having a brick-and-mortar location, so he built Hamilton Auto Glass’ building from scratch. The shop also offers mobile services.
Greg Hamilton inspects the frame of Hamilton auto glass as it is being built.
“When I was at Glasspro, I kind of fell into that position of cutting glass and doing specialty type of work,” he said. “So I was pretty much self-taught on how to fabricate custom cut class. I became the main guy at Glasspro to cut and fabricate glass.”
Today he does standard auto glass repair and replacement, but he also custom-fabricates tempered glass and laminated glass. He works with many different kinds of specialty glass for vehicles other than automobiles, including glass for eighteen-wheelers, school buses, cruise ships, planes, cranes, locomotives and a variety of off-road machinery.
Hamilton also competed at Auto Glass WeekTM twice, earning a silver medal in the Auto Glass Technician Competition while working for Glasspro in 2009 and a bronze medal in the Windshield Repair Olympics while owner of Hamilton Auto Glass in 2013.
Hamilton says his medals are currently packed away, but when he updates his shop he’s going to put them on display.
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