Mike Rudnicki would rather do all the heavy lifting with the push of a button.
The inventive owner of a Thunder Bay custom machine shop, Rudnicki Industrial, is hitting the market this year with a new pickup truck accessory that’s quickly turning peoples’ heads.
Dubbed the Overhauler, the patent pending product is a hydraulic-powered, overhead truck rack that tilts back at a 60-degree angle allowing one person to single-handedly lift heavy, long and awkward items atop a truck.
His promotional video has been making the rounds through social media in northwestern Ontario in the past few months, and is fast gaining followers for its simplicity and utility.
“It has far exceeded our expectations from the get-go,” said Rudnicki.
So uncomplicated in its concept and design, one simply leans a boat, canoe or any object against the rack in the tilted position, secures the load to the tie-down cleats, and with the push of a button on a long controller cable, the unit lifts the load into the horizontal position overtop the truck.
The scaffolding-like rack lifts the object and avoids any contact with an open tail gate, truck box and cab roof.
The all-steel frame’s maximum carrying capacity is 400 pounds.
Rudnicki maintains his invention is one of a kind, since other competitors only manufacture stationary roof racks.
After ruminating about the idea for months, the concept for the device shifted into high gear last fall when Rudnicki and his son, Christopher, were heaving a 14-foot aluminium boat into the back of their truck to go out for a day’s fishing.
The tedious task of loading and unloading a boat, outboard motor, life jackets and the rest of their gear got his creative juices flowing when he got home.
“Not long,” said Rudnicki, “from the time I thought of it until the time I actually built it was a few hours.”
The first public showing of the Overhauler was at an outdoor show in Thunder Bay last February. The brochures flew off his display table.
Next, Rudnicki brought the rack to the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s convention in Toronto in early March, but wasn’t able to display it on the trade floor, instead using it to load and unload another of his popular inventions, the Pac-a-Drum, a portable steel barrel crusher.
Still with a model truck and printer version of the Overhauler, he drew interest from professionals doing remote camp work, remediation, and helicopter and aircraft operations.
Rudnicki said he landed one confirmed order and received strong interest from nine others.
Priced at $3,500 per unit, the rack comes with a winch and cable feature on the frame allowing it be used as a crane to lift heavy items like engine parts or large tires straight up and deposit them on the centre line of a truck bed.
To install, the rack clamps into place onto a pickup, negating the need to drill holes into the truck body.
The real beauty of the system, Rudnicki said, is that it keeps the truck bed wide open to store other gear and doesn’t interfere with soft tonneau covers or aluminium and fibreglass toppers.
“The reason for this is there are a lot of lakes around here that you can’t get into with a trailer,” said Rudnicki, who has an ATV version in mind.
But based on customer feedback, he’s finding a myriad of other uses for the Overhauler.
“Can it lift a moose? Yes, because that’s one of the questions that I get asked often.”
And he’s not segmenting himself to just the recreational market.
“There are unlimited uses for this,” he said. “The people who are most interested in it locally are the contractors and the heavy equipment guys.”
Rudnicki admits he’s been quite taken aback at the overwhelmingly positive response he’s received.
On the distribution and manufacturing side, Rudnicki estimates he might need help.
“The problem I’m anticipating is that I won’t be able to keep up with demand, because I’ve sold 59 already in three months.”
With the design of the Overhauler still a work in progress, future versions are likely to include a mount for an outboard motor.
His vision for his Dawson Road shop remains to produce an independent product line to complement the rest of his shop work. “It’s working very well for us. There are the fill-ins when things get quiet.”
Aside from his portable barrel crusher, Rudnicki manufacturers heavy-duty brush cutters, and a Strap Eater, a high-speed machine that chews up reams of discarded steel banding and spits it out into four-inch lengths for easy transport to the recycler.
As fast as Rudnicki assembles them, he’s exported more than 50 units, predominately to packaging companies across Canada, the U.S., Norway and Australia.
