Award Worthy Innovation

The Chariot Bucket was conceived from a prayer. Our team was working on a design for an articulating bucket, which isn’t an easy thing to do with a ladder boom. After running into one dead-end after another, our President, Dave Peterson, said, “Lord, we need your help!” Then, closing his eyes, he found himself standing in an imaginary aluminum framed bucket with a rounded front. Looking down, he saw sign forks rotating around the bucket from a Lazy-Susan-type device attached below his feet. He popped his eyes open and said, “Why wouldn’t that work?”

Dave brought his inspiration to the R&D guys. They couldn’t think of any reason it wouldn’t work, either, so they got busy. Amazingly, the first prototype was nearly perfect. The material handling system rotated 140 degrees from an anchor point below the operator’s feet, with the weight being born on high-density rollers riding on a curved horizontal rail halfway up the bucket. This system made it possible to have lower forks and mid forks to carry large channel letters and cabinets, and upper forks for raceway signs. Securement clamps were designed to hold the sign in place, giving installers free use of their hands to run the lift and operate tools.

When I stood in that prototype bucket for the first time, what impressed me was how smoothly the sign rotated around the bucket. A hundred-pound sign could be rotated easily with one finger and could be moved a fraction of an inch at a time, if needed. Now it wouldn’t matter how installers parked; they could still get the sign squared up with the wall and have their hands free. That’s half the battle, right?

We took the prototype on the road, placing it in the hands sign installers all over the United States. We were hoping they’d like it almost as much as their articulating buckets for squaring up to a wall. What we learned was thrilling. They liked it better because their articulating arms tended to be jerky, and it’s nerve-wracking to be under hydraulic power right next to the building in a bucket that has inadequate fine-motor skills. They were more comfortable using our hand-operated roller system, which could be nudged a quarter inch at a time.

Another amazing benefit to being on the road, visiting installers, was the exposure it gave us to their frustrations and obstacles at the jobsite. Sign installers are problem solvers extraordinaire, and when we asked for their advice on useful installation accessories for our new Chariot Bucket, they had great ideas. Putting our heads together with theirs, we developed the face bar, the banner spindle, pattern arms, the project bag, and the jib attachment. It’s no wonder why we call sign installers our V.P.s of R&D.

When you look at our sign installation accessories, you’ll quickly discover that they’re designed to do what the second person would be doing in a two-man basket—essentially, holding something. Having a second set of hands is critical for most sign installations, but rather than tying up another person with those menial tasks, why not use accessories?

We often hear the comment, “Well, I always send two guys out on jobs, anyway. It’s just safer.” I won’t argue with that, but to maximize efficiency, it’s nice to have one installer in the bucket and the other on the ground, or behind the wall. There are scores of productive tasks for the second installer when they are no longer needed in the bucket.

The Chariot Bucket went into production in 2019 and was promptly placed into consideration for ISA’s coveted Innovation Award, which we won in 2020! One of our competitors’ trucks was also a finalist that year. They had some amazingly cool Bluetooth technology, far more space-aged than ours. But I think the judges appreciated that we had designed a tool for the new age of signs. After all, signs now weigh a fraction of what they did twenty years ago. So, it shouldn’t take a quarter million-dollar truck with a two-man basket to hang a hundred-and-fifty-pound sign. Sure, there’s plenty of signs we can’t hang, but if it’s lower than 45’ and lighter than 200 bls., the Chariot will likely handle it. Most sign company owners that we’ve asked estimate that 70% of their signs fall comfortably within those parameters.

During those early testing days, it wasn’t uncommon for us to run into naysayers at the jobsites. One installer practically refused to try it. He said he’d stick with his big truck with outriggers and a two-man basket. He refused to climb into the Chariot Bucket until his boss had half-threatened him. They were installing a bunch of signs at a new carwash. When they had finally finished, he climbed out of the Chariot and said, “I think every sign company in the country will one day have one of these.” That’s when we knew we were on the right track.