About SkillAbove
Built by a technician, for technicians.
SkillAbove didn't start in a boardroom. It started with a guy who's spent his whole career with his hands on equipment — figuring out why things break, and building what it takes to fix them.
A career built on solving hard problems
My path into the RV industry took the long way around, and every stop along it taught me something that shows up in the tools we build today.
It started at TSTC, studying avionics — where I learned to work on complex electronic systems where a small fault can't hide. From there I went into the oil and gas industry, working as a mechanic on engine repair, compressor repair, and emission systems, along with mobile truck repair — all as a field service technician out in West Texas.
That West Texas field work shaped how I think about every tool we build. Out there, there is no backup plan. Nobody is coming to save you. When something breaks in the middle of nowhere, you're the one who has to solve it — with what you've got. That taught me to build and rely on tools that make hard jobs manageable, so a technician always has a way to get it done.
Then I wanted to understand automation, so I moved into high-speed manufacturing as a maintenance technician, working on high-speed robotics. That's where I started learning PLC controls — and earned my way into the facility's engineering program, designing equipment to cut manufacturing costs and traveling to install the machines I'd built. Taking a problem from idea to working hardware became second nature.
From there I got into hydraulics — rebuilding motors, cylinders, and hoses, and working on hydraulic systems across everything from automated production lines to heavy construction equipment. I even ran my own business for a while doing frame-off restorations on International Scouts.
In 2016, I became a partner and instructor at SensAbility Technical Training, where I'm still President today. Through that company I traveled to major manufacturers — Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Peterbilt, Caterpillar, M&M Mars, and many more Fortune 500 companies — training their maintenance technicians in hydraulic and pneumatic troubleshooting, electrical controls, basic electrical, relay logic, and PLC programming. Teaching industrial maintenance techs at that level sharpens everything: to teach it, you have to understand it cold.
Then I went back to the oil and gas industry, this time on the controls and instrumentation side — working on massive natural gas compressors and engines (think 92-liter Caterpillars), but mostly doing panel installs, rewiring, and control-system retrofits. I converted units from analog gauges over to digital, and got them onto GSM remote monitoring — so operators could remote-start the units, verify production, and pull downtime history from anywhere. Taking older equipment and modernizing its controls became a specialty.
How the RV world pulled me in
During those oil-and-gas years I was running a 14-and-14 hitch — 14 days out in West Texas, 14 days home. That's when my wife and I made the decision to go full-time in our RV. On my off weeks, I started doing RV repairs, and what began as something to do between hitches turned into a calling.
After four kids, we finally decided we needed a home base, so we've since moved out of the RV and into a home in Florida. Today our operation spans two states — our main warehouse and manufacturing are in Texas, with facilities reaching from Texas to Florida. Family is everything to me, and family time matters more than anything. As you can imagine, balancing that against building a company, staying in the field, and developing new tools is a constant juggling act — but it's one I wouldn't trade, because it keeps me grounded in why I do this.
Eventually I left the oil field for good and took a position at the National RV Training Academy (NRVTA) as their Exteriors and Hydraulics instructor. It was a rotating schedule — I'd teach for a couple of weeks, then be off for three or four, then back to teach again. Being in the classroom with RV techs is where I saw the problem clearly. And that time off between sessions? That's where I started building the tools I knew the industry needed.
The problem nobody had solved
The automotive world has specialized diagnostic tools. So does the industrial world. But the RV industry didn't — techs were diagnosing modern, complex systems with guesswork and hand-me-down methods, wasting hours on problems the right tool could pinpoint in minutes.
I'd spent my whole career around industries that had the right tools for the job. The RV industry deserved the same. So I started building them — the testers and tools I wished I'd had as a working RV tech.
And that West Texas mindset came right along with it. I know what it's like to be out on a job where an extra set of hands just isn't an option — so many of our tools are built to give one person the ability to do work that used to take two. That's exactly why a tool like the TopHand exists. When you can do a job on your own, that's money that stays in your pocket — a good tool pays for itself many times over. You buy it once, and it keeps working for you on every job after that. Our tools are built to be that kind of investment: to make you more capable, more efficient, and more profitable.
Where we are now
I've since left NRVTA to put everything into SkillAbove. And "everything" is the right word — we have a whole catalog of tools still on the drawing board that I haven't had time to build yet, because building a company (and building it right) takes focus.
Here's what makes our tools different: I'm still in the field. Constant R&D means I'm out working on modern RV systems, because the last thing we'd ever do is put out a tool that doesn't work on the newest equipment. Every SkillAbove tool is designed by someone who's actually turning wrenches on the systems it's built to test — and keeps turning them, so our tools stay current as the industry changes.
That's the promise: real tools, built from real field experience, by someone who's still doing the work.
Welcome to SkillAbove.
— Chandler Cooper, Founder