Q1 Newsletter 2024

Spring is here!

And so is our quarterly update.

Here you can see… Work at a Glance, The Team, From Garett, In the Community.

Work at a Glance

January through March have been steady with…

  • Triplex and heater repairs

  • Manufacturing more coils and building new heaters

  • Retrofits, replacing tanks on existing units

  • Building GP series pressure trucks (single and tandem axle) with stainless steel tank and mild steel tank

  • Manufacturing complete GK series fuel trucks with aluminum tanks as well as mild steel (16m3 and 19m3) tanks for water trucks (single axle and tandem axle)*

*We manufacture stand alone tanks for other companies but it’s nice to see the whole fuel truck built top to bottom in our bay. As you can see below, we have a line of trucks ready to come in next and have their repairs, retrofits, or new units built.

The Team

Managers and supervisors participated in a 5S Training Workshop here in March. We learned from a Lean expert with over 20 years of experience building 5S Lean programs. 5S encourages businesses to be organized, making work easier and safer. 5S is practiced by multinational companies as well as small and medium sized organizations across Alberta. It was a great reminder for our staff to always be thinking about efficiency.

Also, we’ve welcomed some new faces to our team at GenTex. We have additional welders in our fabrication department, an engineer, and RAP students from local high schools.

From Garett

“We have a longstanding relationship, hiring both millwrights and welders through the RAP program at local high schools. We believe in the program, it gives kids an opportunity to learn trades and see if that’s what they want to do.

I did a RAP program in the early 80s —it was called work experience back then and I worked at the American Motors dealership through Mechanics in Grade 12. I had a great time.

Some of the mechanics were teasing me because I was a young kid, they called me wet behind the ears. On my last day of work experience, one of the mechanics poured penetrating oil down the back pocket of my coveralls and then lit it on fire —I don’t think you could do that today but it was pretty funny.

These kids are doing great, it’s very reciprocal, it helps the kids and it helps us. Kind of like the hockey draft, you draft the kids and maybe they make it to the major leagues and maybe they don’t. But if you're bringing them into your program young, you can train them without the baggage of learned habits that may not fit in with our way of working, teamwork, core values, etc. Young people are generally more willing to learn, open to possibility.”

In the Community

Great to hear Premier Danielle Smith’s speech at the Leader Dinner last week. She shared her view of the future for Alberta and it was encouraging to hear both as a small business and as proud Albertans. Other folks are looking at us and choosing to move to Alberta from all over which is a testament to the Alberta advantage. We hope they bring their work ethic with them and leave their politics behind. We’re looking forward to a prosperous year with our Premier at the helm.

And it looks like we have another big quarter ahead of us! As always, give us a call at (403) 341-4155 or email us at sales@gentex.ca for your next build, repair, or redesign. We’ll be here, happy to help.

GenTex IndustriesComment