We're tired of
the brochure.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people walk into the wrong trade school, take the wrong aptitude test cold, miss the wrong apprenticeship deadline, and pay the wrong people for information that should have been free. PlumbSquare is the antidote.
The problem.
The trades are having a moment. 678,000 Americans are in registered apprenticeships. The U.S. construction industry was short 439,000 workers in 2025. An elevator mechanic clears $100,000+ a year. A lineman in storm season pulls double-time and per diem.
And yet, the entry-level information ecosystem for the trades is mostly brochures from for-profit schools, recruiter calls, and Facebook groups full of bad advice. Glassdoor barely covers tradespeople. LinkedIn is for office workers. Indeed pay claims are aggressive at best. Nothing tells you the truth about the path, the gatekeepers, the licensure rules, or the warnings every journeyman would give you in a heartbeat — for free, over a beer.
The fix.
PlumbSquare is the trades version of what we've been doing at HonestMOS for military jobs — a transparent, search-first, decision-anchored guide. Every trade gets one clear page. Every state gets one clear page. Every calculator returns one sourced number.
We don't sell leads to trade schools. We don't take sponsorships from recruiters. We don't make you sign up with an email to read the article. Everything is free, bookmarkable, and shareable. The data sources are listed at the bottom of every page.
What we won't do.
- 01Take money from for-profit trade schools, recruiters, or lead-gen brokers. Ever.
- 02Pretend any trade is right for everyone. They're not. The bottom 3 of our quiz is as important as the top 3.
- 03Quote BLS averages without telling you what the bottom 25% and top 10% look like. Averages lie.
- 04Tell you the apprenticeship is easy to get into when it isn't. Some locals turn away 80%+ of applicants.
- 05Hide tool costs, drug-test requirements, license fees, or recurring CE costs from new entrants.
Who built this.
PlumbSquare is a Grindstone Labs property — a portfolio of bootstrapped tools that exist to make opaque industries less opaque. Sister property HonestMOS does the same thing for U.S. military jobs.
Founder background: CPA, PMP, CS degree, former Army officer. A grandfather who was a union pipefitter and a father-in-law who was a journeyman electrician. Built the first version of this site in one weekend because somebody had to.
What's next.
- Next sprint: all 50 states with full licensing-board data. State × trade combinatorial pages.
- Sprint after: Davis-Bacon prevailing wage lookup. Union local directory with anonymous reviews.
- Then: First investigative piece. For-profit school outcomes data. Pre-apprenticeship directory.
- Eventually: Review submission (anonymous, no login). License-verified contributor moat. Pension comparison tool. Drug-testing reality check by employer.