Grainswest - Tech 2025

Tech 2025 grainswest.com 17 BY IAN DOIG • ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY CHU Independent manufacturer’s equipment connector is a big deal One little hitch R eal Garant began his work life at 18 farming grain and forages with his father and two brothers in the Donnelly area. In winter, he took a job at a local sawmill operat- ed by relatives. A general labourer, he was inquisitive and bombarded maintenance staff with questions. Over following seasons, he serviced air and electrical systems and began welding and machining various parts. To beef up his farm skillset, he took an apprentice machining course at NAIT. Soon after, he established a small shop on the farm. Customer demand grew quickly. He rented his land to his brothers and threw himself into the launch of his own full time business, Donnelly Machining and Fabricating. The business serves a wide variety of clients in agriculture and agri-food manufacturing, the heavy equip- ment and forestry industries and even schools and hospitals. It’s a go-to business in the Upper Peace Region, but it is Garant’s 2022 product the Spider Hitch, which launched a second enter- prise that carries international potential. GrainsWest: What sparked the idea for the Spider Hitch? Real Garant: A local farmer requested we design something for him, and we partnered to start Spider Hitch. His farm acquired the first three John Deere X9 combines in the area, the biggest at the time. They love the combines, but hitching up was an issue. Crossing rivers and the highway they quite often had to trailer the large headers. He said, “Can we solve this problem?” He threw some ideas by me. I really like designing and engi- neering new ideas, so I went to my drafting and thinking room and pieced things together. GW: Did your partner leave the business? RG: He couldn’t do the business and continue to farm, so he sold out. I asked my son David, daughter Chantel Jodoin and wife Elaine to join the business. My son-in-law Daniel Jodoin is also a main worker. It’s been a huge learning curve. The first six months were crazy; sourcing materials, setting up, patenting and trademarking. GW: How does Spider Hitch work? RG: I built the first three in April 2021 for that John Deere model. They used the prototype that fall and really liked it. In the past, they had to have three people to hitch up. They would have the operator in the combine seat looking in his mirror. He’s watching for hand signals from someone beside the combine, and a third person would hold the hitch up under the combine. That was a safety concern, especially at nighttime or if it was dusty. There were visibility and communication issues. Also, to hitch up, you take two guys away from what they’re doing. Our goal was to eliminate those issues. It has a 12,000-pound Warn Industries winch and 80 feet of synthetic line instead of steel cable. If you tug on them hard, steel cables can coil up like a spring. Then they’re harder to work with; it doesn’t want to coil back and lie there nicely. If you get wire breakage, you get these little needles that spike into your fingers and can injure people. The synthetic line doesn’t have these issues.