WESTERN PRODUCER — It’s a pretty good bet an invention has a good chance of being successful when a video about it is posted to Facebook and unexpectedly gets millions of views from around the world.
That’s what happened to Real Garant of Donnelly, Alta., after he created a device aimed at solving a problem faced by everyone from farmers to firefighters.
“I wouldn’t call it high tech. To me, it’s a fairly simple solution,” he said.
“But we heard it so many times at the trade show — ‘where were you 40 years ago?’ — from some of the older farmers. And then the other comment we heard a lot of was … ‘man, that’s so simple. How come I didn’t think of that?’ and tons of comments like that.”
Garant’s company, Spider Hitch Inc., won the grand prize of $20,000 at the Ag Innovations Awards competition at the Agri-Trade Equipment Expo in Red Deer late last year. It was honoured for a device that allows one person to easily and safely hitch farm equipment such as header trailers to machines such as combines.
The Spider Hitch includes an electric Warn winch that can be remotely operated using a special fob similar to a garage door opener, as well as an app on a smartphone, said Garant.
The hitch is mounted on the combine and uses a synthetic tow rope that can be attached by one person to the trailer, allowing them to pull the trailer toward, and automatically position it on, the stationary combine.
It eliminates the traditional method of jockeying the combine backward to the trailer, which can be dangerous as well as awkward and time consuming, said Garant. He discovered the level of interest in the Spider Hitch after a brief video of his son, David, demonstrating how it worked was posted last year to a Facebook page for Saskatchewan farmers.
About four hours later, it had been viewed about 86,000 times, soaring to about 1.2 million the next day and hitting about 13.5 million by the fifth day, said Garant.
“It just stormed the world, and we’re way north of 120-some million views (now) on Facebook. I think it’s 280 million on TikTok, something like that. It’s crazy. I think all the stars lined up.… It just piques everybody’s attention in the farming world, and they start dreaming about all these applications.”
Potential uses range from hooking up anhydrous ammonia tanks to hitching manure and hay wagons, he said. A produce farmer in Ontario told Garant the Spider Hitch had increased daily production about 20 percent by reducing the amount of time it took to re-hitch trailers during harvesting.
Although the device has attracted interest from farmers, inquiries have also been made by potential customers in industries such as forestry, mining and heavy construction, said Garant. They have even included the New York City Fire Department for use on specialty emergency trailers, he said.
“They said they could just send one person and very quickly, you know, in 45 seconds basically hitch up and hit the road … so, there’s a huge world of hitching up stuff that we can look into.”
The company is currently working to upgrade the design of the Spider Hitch for such customers, said Garant.
“We’re going through the engineering right now and we’re trying to get it to the point where it’s all certified for highway use, and that would probably incorporate an option of putting a pin across the latch as a third safety.”
Spider Hitch Inc. has partnered with a company in the Calgary area to manufacture its devices, whose full retail price is $8,750, he said.
“And we also have dealer pricing, of course, when dealers are buying like 30 at a time or so, and so there’s room in there for dealers, but we’re pretty much considered the distributor right now.”
As a former northern Alberta farmer who now rents his land to his brothers, Garant, 58, has been inventing things since he was about 16 years old. Producers tend to have an inventive turn of mind because they must not only be able to repair much of their machinery but also improvise solutions to problems on their farms.
Garant developed a machine shop business that has designed and fabricated equipment ranging from the food industry to the logging and sawmill sector.
“We’ve worked with engineers from all over the world and we’ve done some very cool, very fantastic projects.”
The idea for the Spider Hitch was sparked by the increasingly massive size of combines, said Garant. Manufacturers are now making headers that can be as much as 60 feet wide, he added.
The header must be detached and hauled behind the combine in a special trailer so that it can travel safely on rural roads. The traditional method of hitching the trailer to the combine typically requires up to three people, with one person operating the combine while the others are on the ground.
Besides tying up people who could be doing other tasks, one person must hold up the trailer hitch, “and he’s invisible to the driver,” said Garant.
“He’s underneath the whole back end of the combine, so he’s the one in more of a dangerous location … and then the second person is standing off to the side and he’s giving directions, and hopefully the directions are good.”
Apart from the difficulty of undertaking this process during poor weather or after sundown, the large weight and size of the combine can cause it to react to the operator in unintended ways.
“It could all of a sudden lurch backward and hit the hitch a lot harder than you want,” said Garant.
“You have to be careful with hands and fingers, and I know one farmer told us he came very close to seriously injuring his wife. And he said that’s not going to happen again. He purchased a (Spider Hitch) right away.”
Spider Hitch Inc. has received thousands of emails from potential customers in countries ranging from Ireland, France and Germany to Australia, New Zealand, India and the Middle East, said Garant.
“Some of them, I don’t know why. I’m trying to picture where they will use it, but again, it’s hitching up things, which is quite universal.”
When asked if his invention could make him a millionaire, Garant laughed.
“I don’t know. I’m just going along for the ride.”
