Lethbridge is home to many successful companies. Haul-All Equipment Ltd. has customers in many countries. Its products easily recognized by people in them and across North America.
Haul-All Equipment produces containers to store waste and recycling materials, vehicles to collect and transport garbage and transfer stations to help get bulk garbage into landfills.
The company was formed in 1931 as a blacksmith shop in 1931. Since then it has obtained more than 30 patents and trademarks.
Haul-All Equipment’s most recognized product is its Hide-A-Bag container. A sloped garbage container that can be found along highways in parks and other places. The company a trademark for its shape. Vice President and CFO Kelly Phillip said, “Nobody can make that shape of container without infringing on our trademark. It’s a very famous container.”
Haul-All Equipment focuses on innovation, uniqueness and listening to its customers.
“Another interesting project we just finished,” said Phillip, “is a hands free container where the user doesn’t need to touch it to open it. It’s also animal resistant meaning a bear can’t get into it. It uses a foot pedal to activate the lid.” He says it’s a good one to use in National Parks and other places. Haul-All Equipment tested the design to see how well it can resist bears. He said it took one to the Wildlife Discovery Centre, smothered it in peanut butter, which bears like. The bears were not able to open it.
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“A 12 hundred pound bear couldn’t breach the container and so we’re pretty proud of that.” said Phillip.
Haul-All Equipment has a manufacturing plant in Lethbridge. It also has a licensed manufacturer in California to meet demand for containers in the U.S. The company was asked to design and produce a waste container for the 2010 Olympics. It did and can now sell similar containers publicly.
However, there is much more to Haul-All’s business. Another major product it’s developing is a collection vehicle for organics.”
“That’s the next big thing in our industry,” said Phillip. “Separating organics from the waste stream. In the 1980’s recycling was the big thing to separate from the general waste stream. Moving forward, municipalities are interested in taking organics out and creating compost from them. ”
The Sure Flame Division of Haul-All produces construction heaters. One model that produces 2.2 million BTU’s could heat 25 homes. Sure Flame designs and produces heaters for a wide range of uses.
“We had a unique project in California where a pistachio company needed a heater to dry and crack the shell of their pistachios so they approached us and we developed a heater for them,” said Phillip.
The company it built the heater for controls about 80 percent of North America’s pistachio market.
“So there’s about a 90 percent chance that if you eat a pistachio nut this season, it was dried with a Sure Flame heater,” he said.
Haul-All Equipment contributes a great deal to the economy. Phillip says the company credits its employees and their families for much of its success. Haul-All Equipment has about one hundred employees. Some of them have been with the company for 20 to more than 30 years.
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