Interview With a Roofer: Matthew Melchor on Starting Over, Doing Things Right, and Finding Purpose in the Work
Interview With a Roofer: Matthew Melchor on Starting Over, Doing Things Right, and Finding Purpose in the Work
Matthew Melchor did not spend his first 21 years in the workforce thinking he would eventually become a roofer.
He spent them in restaurants.
Then, on April 6, 2021, Matthew was let go from his job. He was suddenly unemployed after more than two decades in the same industry and, by his own account, had no real idea what came next.
Nine days later, a hailstorm hit his house.
Matthew did what homeowners all over Central Texas do after a storm and called a roofing company to come take a look. That company happened to be Freetail Roofing, and the guy who showed up happened to be owner Michael Kalish.
Somewhere during that interaction, Michael asked a freshly unemployed restaurant veteran a question Matthew probably was not expecting.
Had he ever considered roofing?
“The short answer was no,” Matthew said. But he needed a job, had never been afraid of hard work, and was willing to step outside his comfort zone. He agreed to ride around with Michael for a couple of weeks and see what he thought.
He caught on quickly.
More importantly, he liked it.
Five years later, Matthew is a Roof System Specialist at Freetail Roofing, and what began with a hailstorm and a pretty unusual job interview has turned into an entirely new career. Looking back, Matthew does not see the timing as accidental. “I honestly believe that God put me in touch with Michael,” he said. “Michael has been a blessing to me and my family.”
Learning Something New
Changing careers after 21 years will teach you a few things about yourself.
For Matthew, one of them was discovering that he was capable of becoming good at something completely new. Or, as he puts it, roofing taught him “that I am more than just BBQ royalty.”
We should probably explain that.
Outside of roofing, Matthew competes in barbecue competitions, along with fishing when he gets the chance. He also claims a former life as a pretty good tennis player before an injury in high school brought that career to an early end. These days, a normal soundtrack in the truck is Christian hip-hop or country music, the preferred gas-station cuisine is 7-Eleven pizza, and he carries a box knife every day whether he is working or not.
But learning roofing required starting over as a beginner.
Matthew learned by working hard, watching, listening, and asking questions. That is also the advice he would give someone entering the trades today: stay organized, communicate, and do not be afraid to ask when you do not know something.
Some lessons were slightly more painful than others.
Early in his roofing career, Matthew put the wrong color shingles on a customer’s roof. “That was not fun,” he said, but it permanently reinforced one particular habit: document the details.
It also fits a lesson he learned long before roofing.
Matthew credits his parents with shaping much of the way he approaches work. His mother taught him resourcefulness. Money was not always plentiful growing up, but he remembers her being able to “stretch a buck” and make sure the family had what it needed. His father showed him what hard work looked like, including working long hours without complaining and never expecting something to simply be handed to him.
There was another phrase in the Melchor household that stuck: “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”
Matthew adds an important second half to that idea. Even if something does not seem especially important to you, it may be important to someone else. That means it still deserves your best effort.
The Customer Decides Whether You Got It Right
That philosophy shows up in the way Matthew talks about roofing.
Asked what “doing the job right” means, he does not start with installation specifications or materials. Those things matter, of course, but Freetail is supposed to already know the craft.
Matthew starts with the customer.
“If the customer isn’t satisfied, then we didn’t do it right.”
His favorite part of a reroof is the transformation, but some of his proudest early moments were much smaller: completing his first repair and his first gutter job. Even now, he says there is something satisfying about seeing a finished roof and watching the homeowner get excited about what has changed.
The relationship matters just as much.
“It means the world to be trusted by a complete stranger and making a new friend through conversations,” Matthew said.
That perspective becomes particularly important when a homeowner is overwhelmed. Matthew is a homeowner too. He knows how stressful it can be to spend a significant amount of money on your house while trying to understand repairs, contractors, materials, timelines, and insurance.
His message to customers is that they hired Freetail to take some of that stress off their plate. If they are confused, he wants them to ask. If there is a problem, he wants them to communicate so the team can find a resolution.
Besides the roof itself, Matthew believes the most important thing a contractor can provide is trust.
A lot of roofing work is expensive. Customers need to believe the person advising them is actually looking out for their interests. For Matthew, honesty can be as simple as telling someone a repair will solve the problem instead of trying to sell them an entire roof.
It also means explaining the “why.”
A homeowner should not only know what is wrong. They should understand why it is a problem and why a particular solution makes sense.
“We Are Big Enough to Handle Any Project and Small Enough to Really Care”
Matthew’s typical workday starts early. He is up around 5:30 getting his kids ready for school before the roofing day begins.
On project days, he may arrive at a reroof around 8 a.m., review the work order with the crew, verify materials, make sure the property is protected, stay in communication with the crew lead, and track down additional materials when something changes. On days without active projects, he is often inspecting customer properties.
What homeowners may not see is how much driving and planning happens behind all of it.
Freetail covers a large area, and even a relatively small repair requires coordination. Matthew says a lot of planning goes into making the process feel smooth for the customer, whether the job is a minor fix or a large exterior remodel.
There is also the reality of trying to serve multiple customers at once while making each one feel like a priority. That balancing act can be stressful, particularly when insurance becomes involved. Matthew describes insurance work as one of the parts of roofing requiring the most patience because necessary repairs can sometimes get delayed while coverage is worked out.
Still, he likes the variety of working in Central Texas. There is always a different customer, property, or project, and there are plenty of reminders that this is home. Friday night football makes his list.
So does the kind of business that happens in a community where reputation travels.
Matthew’s description of Freetail is straightforward: “We are big enough to handle any project and small enough to really care.”
Working for a Purpose
When the Texas heat is doing what Texas heat does, Matthew says two things keep him going: electrolytes and his family.
Mostly his family.
“No one works for fun,” he said. “They work for purpose. My purpose is to provide for my family.”
Matthew is the father of four children, and they are the thing outside of work he is proudest of. On a difficult day, something as simple as calling one of his parents can make things a little better.
That connection between work and family is part of what roofing has come to mean to him. The job did not just give Matthew something new to learn after losing a career he had spent two decades building. It created new opportunities for his family.
And apparently it also created an uncontrollable need to identify his work while driving around Central Texas.
When Matthew passes a roof he helped with, he says he always has to point it out.
“That’s one I worked on.”
After five years, there are increasingly more of those roofs to point at.
Matthew hopes the people underneath them remember him as someone who did what he said he was going to do, when he said he was going to do it. He wants coworkers to see him as someone who will work until the job is finished.
He would also, for the record, like them to recognize him as “the strongest, best-looking person at Freetail Roofing.”
We will allow the rest of the team an opportunity to respond to that claim in their own interviews.
Jokes aside, Matthew’s final answer probably says the most about what he wants his work to represent.
“At the end of the day, I want people to know we really care about our customers’ needs. We don’t just do it for the paycheck.”
Five years ago, Matthew did not know roofing was going to be part of his story. He just knew he needed to figure out what came next.
A job loss, a hailstorm, and one unexpected conversation later, he found it.