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36 SPRING 2019 FORT GARRY FIRE TRUCKS BY JIM TIMLICK T he motto of Fort Garry Fire Trucks is One Tough Truck. Just how tough are we talking? Consider that many of the vehicles that roll out of the company's 50,000-square-foot manufacturing plant at CentrePort Canada will be called upon to work in some of the most inhospitable conditions on the planet. That includes everything from bone- chilling lows of -60 C in Canada's North to blistering highs of 50 C in desert climes halfway around the world. And they often have to travel on some of the most treacherous roads known to man to get to where they need to go. The numbers seem to bear out just how tough the company's trucks must be. Fort Garry, which is Canada's oldest and largest manufacturer of fire- fighting apparatus, sells more than 100 rigs in a typical year. While the bulk of those sales are here in Canada, where the company supplies equipment to every province, it has buyers as far away as China, Cuba, Costa Rica, Pakistan, the Bahamas and the United Arab Emirates. "We think we have the toughest truck in the industry," says CEO Rick Suche. "Everybody knows how bad our roads are here. If our trucks will last in Manitoba they'll last anywhere in the world," he laughs. "Our pothole season is a good test." While Fort Garry is well-known in fire-fighting circles around the world, Suche acknowledges the company remains something of a secret to most local folks. It was started in 1919 in downtown Winnipeg, in a small shop located between Fort and Garry streets. Known as Fort Garry Tire and Vulcanizing, it started out fabricating rubber products such as rubber-bonded steel equipment. In 1979, soon after Suche joined the company his father had purchased three years earlier, Fort Garry got into the fire-fighting equipment business and adopted its current name. "We had contracted out all of our gravel equipment to other companies at the time. We had an empty warehouse and I said, 'We better find something to fill it with,' " he laughs. "I saw a void in the industry at the time. There were three big companies down east that were fighting each other tooth and nail and they all put each other out of business. That left an opening in the marketplace for us." With the exception of the commercial chassis used in some of its trucks, every aspect of design and construction is handled by Fort Garry employees, HOT WHEELS Fort Garry Fire Trucks roll out around the world CONTINUED >>

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