CoolDrive veteran Robert Picone retires

When Robert Picone walked into Melbourne Auto-Air’s premises on Camberwell Road on 11 March 1980, the business that would become CoolDrive was still a small operation finding its feet.

Forty-five years later, Mr Picone retired from one of the country’s largest automotive wholesalers on 11 November 2025, having helped build it, branch by branch, from that modest beginning into a national distribution network.

His departure also closes a 13-year chapter on the VASA board, where he represented the wholesale side of an industry he watched change from the inside out.

Building from scratch

CoolDrive’s early growth carries Robert’s fingerprints. Three years after joining, he helped establish the company’s new premises at 42 Greenaway Street, Bulleen – a significant step up from the Camberwell Road shopfront and a sign of what was coming.

The bigger test arrived in 2002, when CoolDrive opened its first branch outside Victoria.

Robert packed up his family – wife and two young daughters – and moved to Sydney to run the new Seven Hills operation as branch manager. 

He describes it in terms any small-business owner would recognise.

“It was like running my own business,” Robert told SightGlass. 

“Starting from scratch and having the opportunity to build something. It’s very rewarding.”

That stint in New South Wales lasted nearly a decade before Robert and his family returned to Melbourne in 2011. A series of leadership and executive roles followed at CoolDrive’s Box Hill headquarters, including a period as director.

In his later years with the company, Mr Picone was personally involved in the acceleration of CoolDrive’s branch network, which expanded significantly in the years leading up to his retirement.

Each new location, he said, created opportunities for staff to step up from sales roles into branch management and beyond.

“It gives the guys a chance to spread their wings, show us what they can do, be part of something from the start,” he said.

“That’s always what I’ve enjoyed – starting something and then seeing it through.”

In 2017 Robert’s longstanding commitment was recognised by his induction to the CoolDrive Hall of Fame as the company celebrated its fourtieth year and Robert’s status as longest-serving employee.

A wholesaler’s seat at the table

CoolDrive has been part of the VASA story since its beginnings. The company’s executive chair, John Blanchard, was a founding director of the association.

When CoolDrive’s previous VASA board representative, Tim Grimes, stepped down, Robert was elected at the VASA annual general meeting held in Geelong on 10 June 2012.

His interest in joining the board was straightforward: training and education. As a wholesaler with branches across the country, CoolDrive sits at a point in the supply chain where technical knowledge matters commercially.

Its staff need to understand the products they sell, and its customers – the workshops and technicians who are VASA’s core membership – need current information about what is changing and why.

“Training and education is very important,” Robert told SightGlass.

“That’s what interested me – the trade shows and the training seminars and all the information giving. And CoolDrive needed wholesaler representation on the board.”

Wholesalers have an outsized effect in terms of disseminating industry information. When VASA runs an event or promotes a new initiative, the message travels through wholesaler branches and on to their customers in workshops across the country. That distribution network, Robert noted, gives wholesalers “a lot of power” when it comes to getting the word out.

Refrigerants and regulation

Asked about the most significant changes during his career, Robert returned to one subject: refrigerants.

The progression from R-12 through R-134a and now to R-1234yf has reshaped the trade at every level, from the equipment workshops need to the licensing and compliance requirements they face, to the pricing and supply dynamics that wholesalers manage every day.

“The change in the refrigerant is probably the biggest change in the industry,” Robert reflected.

“The supply, the demand, what type of refrigerants. And when you sell it, of course, there’s recycling and recovery involved. You’ve got to know all the rules and regulations.”

R-1234yf had been slow to gain traction in Australia relative to international expectations, but at the time of Mr Picone’s retirement demand was building noticeably as major car-makers including Toyota and Mitsubishi moved their local model ranges across to YF.

Robert saw the shift first-hand through CoolDrive’s order books.

“It’s only really gaining a lot of traction now, in the last 18 months or so,” he said.

“The cost was huge, but now we’re bringing in more and more.”

The quota system governing refrigerant imports, the carbon tax era and the advent of ARCtick licensing requirements all fell within his tenure – changes that added layers of complexity for a wholesaler that imports and distributes refrigerant nationally.

Wire & Gas and what stays

Mr Picone counts the Wire & Gas conferences among his VASA highlights. The events, which bring together technicians, suppliers and trainers for a concentrated program of technical learning and industry networking, remain one of the association’s signature achievements.

“Everybody looks forward to it,” Robert enthused. “A great chance to meet and greet, catch up with all the guys in the industry, learn some new things. The training and the Wire & Gas in particular – that was always the highlight.”

He acknowledged the challenge of keeping events running and filling seats when VASA members are busy with their own businesses, but said the effort put in by people at VASA had kept the events worthwhile. 

The decision to co-host with The Automotive Technician (TaT) for Wire & Gas 2026, he added, makes sense for an industry that is not large enough in Australia to sustain two separate events of that scale.

“The trades are sort of aligned,” Robert said. “To have a bigger, better event, it’s got to be the way to go.”

CoolDrive’s VASA board seat has passed to Tony Stephens, who was elected unopposed at the most recent annual general meeting.

Tony brings his own deep roots in the automotive wholesale trade, having started in 1978 at Martin Wilson Bros. 

Based in Queensland, Tony maintains the wholesaler perspective that Robert brought to the VASA board.

After four and a half decades, the industry he leaves behind is in the middle of another generational shift – R-1234yf finally gaining ground, electrified vehicles and their thermal management systems growing more complex and the prospect of new cooling tech including multi-refrigerant vehicles.

The workshops CoolDrive supplies, and the association Mr Picone helped govern, will be at the centre of it. He has done his share of the building.