Brian & James (Interview Inside)
SPEAKERS ✅
Hi, I’m Brian Coleman, Versalift Vice President of Sales for North and South America. I’m James Christian, Vice President of Engineering and CTO of Versalift.
1:43
James, when we’re talking with customers out in the field, we spend a lot of time, from a sales perspective, really just trying to understand what we can do to help customers make their job easier. What does engineering really spend their time on, when you guys were looking at designs and things were the kind of things that you’re really looking for? ✅
2:03 – 2:18
…We met with lots of customers and users. And, you know, we take into account design the manufacturability of a piece of equipment, you know, in what specifications are and what it really needs to do. But, you know, number one top on the list is the safety side of it. ✅
2:33 – 2:44
And I think that that’s really number one for the sales department, the company as a whole, really, is to, to ensure that what we design and build keeps the operators /user equipment as safe as possible out in the field. ✅
2:50 – 3:01
…We’re very conservative in our designs to start with, so we design a piece of equipment, we really don’t, you know, we don’t go down to the bare minimum of what a spec or standards are going to require us to do.
3:05 – 3:23
…We make them a lot stronger than what they should be. Because we know how equipment is used. We’ve met with linemen, we know the reports, we know mechanics, we know what happens to equipment, so we really know how they’re gonna be used. We design for the real user in the real world, what they’re going to use them for. ✅
3:23
And I can tell you, our operators, the guys who are running our equipment like to hear that, right, there’s, there’s nothing more important to know that the equipment they’re using is capable of more than what they actually put it in. ✅
3:37
…One of our early safety innovations that we had, or have, is the ElectroGuard, you know, the ElectroGuard is, you know, a customer gets in a truck, he doesn’t always extend his insulated boom out first. So, electric or to develop that if you don’t do that you’re still protected in your operation. You know, we try to make everything as simple and easy for the operator cause he has a job to do. And we need to make it as simple and easy for him to be safe, you know, while he is using our equipment. ✅
4:06
Yeah, I’ve always liked the passiveness of all the safety innovations that we do put into the equipment because it doesn’t require the operator to do anything.
4:16
He’s just automatically protected. ✅
4:17 – 4:44
Exactly. You know, one of the you know, one of the newer ones that we came out with was TruGuard and that’s exactly what it does. You know, the operator really doesn’t even know it’s there. But you know, it’s protecting him from being electrocuted while he’s up working on you know, hot lines. So, you know, that’s exactly the kind of thing we look at something that’s simple, that’s going to protect them, you know, and it really doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t add cost to the equipment. ✅
5:37 – 5:48
I remember from a little different perspective, just from being on the distribution side, when James was working on that project. I remember the first time we got it, back in the 80’s. ✅
