Some experts claim that simple inventions can make you rich.
If that’s true, Trevor Jones should be the wealthiest man in Cochrane, the bedroom community just west of Calgary.
His brain will not stop tinkering with ways to make life better, or at least more interesting.
He’s a mechanical designer and engineer by training, and worked for Rolls-Royce Aero Engines. He’s also a mountain climber (with 70 “firsts” to his credit) and an inventor by necessity. A lot of his tinkering revolves around getting up and down from high, scary places.
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| Larry MacDougal photo, Business Edge |
| Inventor Trevor Jones holds up a Griptraks traction mat, which he designed to help free vehicles stuck in snow and mud. |
But now Jones has invented something for people who stay on the ground, and you’ll wish you had it the next time you get stuck in snow, sand or mud.
It’s called the Griptraks Traction Mat.
“Griptraks actually came from my attempt to make a better piece of mountaineering equipment,” Jones admits, as he proudly displays a gadget he designed to help climbers ascend a rope. “Compare this to these commercial ones,” he says. “Theirs are big and clunky. Mine is elegant and works on a different principle.”
Maybe it was a bit too elegant. Soon after he created it, French equipment maker Petzl brought out a product that was annoyingly similar. Jones was not about to compete with a behemoth like Petzl, and he grudgingly acknowledges that they did an awfully good design job, so it was back to the drawing board.
To create his ascenders, Jones had to buy a 4x4-foot sheet of expanded steel mesh, and he had lots of it left over. “People were slipping on my front steps, so I put the mesh out there.” After much experimenting, he discovered that it could provide traction, at least in one direction. If it worked for boots, why not for car tires? Soon he was cutting up strips of the mesh and now they’re being sold as Griptraks in Home Hardware and Auto Value stores and Husky/Mohawk gas stations.
“Griptraks provide friction on uneven low-friction surfaces,” says Jones, with an engineer’s precision.
“They’re a compact, low-cost alternative to tire chains.”
One person who swears by them is his climbing buddy Brian Wyvill, known as “Blob” to his friends. “Blob got stuck coming off Highway 1 at the Cochrane turnoff and he called me, saying this might be an ideal time to demonstrate my product,” recalls Jones. Using the mat, Blob’s vehicle was out within three minutes.
Even more impressive was the subsequent rescue of a school bus that went into the ditch. “The driver was crying,” says Jones, “and we were able to get her out with no problem.”
The Griptraks website also has a testimonial from a truck driver who was stuck and “in a real fix” because the truck was slewing sideways. “I was just thinking about the $100 tow bill when two guys appeared from a nearby house,” says the trucker. They stuck the Griptraks traction mats under his wheels and he drove out.
Jones acknowledges that Griptraks will not save you if you’re really, really stuck. It’s worth a trip to his website just to see two outlandish examples of hopeless cases. But they work so well that’s he patented the idea and arranged for supplies of the product. “The hardest part is the cutting, because it has to be done with great precision,” he says.
Griptraks are made of steel because aluminum will not dig in as well. And since paint would just chip off, he zinc-plates the product. They are packaged in a waxed storage box that fits easily in your trunk and doesn’t fall apart when it gets wet. This is a guy who pays attention to details!
“What I really have here in Cochrane is a custom design and engineering facility that creates simple mechanical devices that perform useful tasks in an improved way,” says Jones.
His website also lists several rock- and ice-climbing tools and belay devices. Right now, the climbing products are in the R&D stage, but Griptraks have become a cottage industry for Jones.
A clerk at Calgary Auto Value store, where they retail for $31, says he sold a set just last week and “they actually work pretty good.”
Trevor Jones is not content simply helping us get unstuck from snow, sand and mud. He has much bigger plans. He also wants to extricate the whole planet from our fog of pollution.
“Since 1990, I’ve been working on a way to reduce exhaust emissions,” he says. He testified on that subject before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment in 1993.
“I probably do have a solution, and it’s pretty slick” he says, with no lack of modesty. “But there’s a lot of politics in the way.”
Given the way Jones plows through mountains, snowbanks and other obstacles, he just might be the person to get the world unstuck on environmental protection.
Web watch:
(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
