New planer designed to be more efficient and better for environment
A local inventor has created a product to make road grading more efficient and is asking for support from the province to help make his invention widely available.
Cory Halischuk of Wolf Products, based in Clandeboye, has designed and constructed a commercial planer that he says can save municipalities time and money while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Halischuk has designed different sizes of the planer to accommodate various needs.
“Who doesn’t want to have less work and save money?” Halischuk said.
Halischuk has been talking with Selkirk MLA Richard Perchotte to discuss assistance from the province to help with the commercialization of the product. Halischuk will do what he can to get the word out about his planers, but he said without support from the province, it will be a slow start.
The grader attachments currently available aren’t ideal for areas like service side roads, back lanes and parking lots, Halischuk said. For example, the power rake often used pulverizes the whole top layer of a road, which is time-consuming.
“It makes it complete fluff, so you still end up having to level it all and then compact, where [my commercial planer] is very fast,” he said. “It makes a pass-through, tears it up and compresses it right away. It’s a much faster attachment.”
The fewer passes a grader has to make, the more it will save money and lower greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2). Plus, Halischuk said his products will further reduce emissions, which contribute to climate change, because of the durability of the planers.
“We’re building a better product to last longer,” he said. “Every time you touch a product to recycle it, you’re creating CO2, so if you make a product that’s better, that lasts longer, it’s not going to go and create CO2 again for quite a while. All this stuff that we’re building is going to hold up.”
Halischuk would like to see his commercial planers used across the country.
“People sit back and wait for the silver bullet. It isn’t going to happen. You have to start changing. There has to be changes; little changes at a time make a difference,” he said. “If it’s going to work here, it’s going to work across Canada. So, if we’re going to be saving money here and [lowering] CO2, everybody should be the same. Then if you got enough of them running, you’re going to make a dent in the CO2.”
Wolf Products’ commercial planers also have a shorter learning curve than those currently available, Halischuk said.
Halischuk has 38 years of self-employment in construction and said it’s a good feeling to be able to create products that fill gaps in the market.
“It’s making someone’s life better, easier. It’s resolving the problem,” he said. “I just love designing. … As long as we see a problem, I can design to get rid of it.”
More information about Halischuk’s inventions, including demonstration videos are available on the Wolf Products website (wolfproductsltd.com).
