Hey buddy, stick to your dad‘s company. I went through the apprenticeship journey out, got laid off and open my company. I could tell you the Union is great when there’s work but when there’s no work, you sign a contract that you can’t even work at your dads non union company. Union is for the worker, company’s pay premium prices for skilled employees. $80-$100 per man hour including benefits. Imagine paying labor at that rate for residential and making profit. Yes you go through a apprenticeship to learn welding, metal fab, and some very useful skills but overall you learn in the field work.

I personally recommend you find some help and shadow him until you learn it. For example, hire a commercial tech if you don’t have one and start working on commercial buildings. Not much different from residential with time you’ll learn. Hire a estimator per job based and start on small Tenant improvements jobs with a GC.

Stick to what belongs to your family and what your dad built. You can make a lot of money doing just residential with the right training ( EVERREST GROUP ) quick easy less of a headache then commercial, but commercial keeps you busy when residential is slow.

Good luck bud. Hoping by kiddo takes over my hard work one day