THUNDER BAY — A small city manufacturing firm has landed an important partnership with Coachmen RV, one of North America's leading recreational vehicle makers.
LBC Contracting Inc. is the parent company of Auto Flex Air Ride Suspension, which uses a compressed-air system to replace a vehicle's rear suspension to improve handling, braking and comfort.
According to the company, it also maintains ride height and provides better gas mileage.
LBC Contracting started as a load-and-haul contractor in the forest industry in 1982, but in 1995 brothers Derrick and Paul Legros sold their trucks and began manufacturing logging trailers in Thunder Bay.
By 2007, they had expanded to producing air-ride suspensions for RV trailers, followed later by their Auto Flex Air Ride system for RV motorhomes, ambulances, buses and personal and commercial light trucks.
The system was developed in Thunder Bay, and the company holds five different patents in North America, with one patent pending in Europe.
"Our system is a complete rear suspension swap-out. Springs are removed completely," CEO Derrick Legros said "It's QVM [quality vehicle manufacture) friendly, which means it doesn't void warranty on new vehicles because it doesn't require cutting, welding, drilling, or rearranging the chassis or axle housing."
He said the system is also unique because it's weather-friendly.
"It works very well in warm and cold weather. Being up here in Northwestern Ontario we have the perfect testing ground because we have the coldest winters and very nice, warm summers. So we are a few steps ahead of everybody else when we're testing these suspensions and air supply to make sure they don't freeze."
Under the agreement with Coachmen, the RV manufacturer will use the Auto Flex system in its Concord motorhomes.
Coachmen spokesperson Luke Handyside said the Concord is its "top-of-the-line Class C which offers a lot of premium features found only in Class A diesel-pushers ... The fact we can now offer a true air ride suspension puts us in a category all our own which is why the new Concord 321DS was largely designed around the Auto Flex system."
LBC credits its success partly to the help it received from the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre back in 2010.
At that time, it organized a conference call with the Canadian Consulate in Detroit to set up a meeting with Ford Motor Company.
That resulted in work with various Ford engineers to develop testing requirements needed to ensure compatibility with different kinds of vehicles.
The Thunder Bay company has four employees and does all its research and development in the city.
It handles individual orders here but gets larger orders completed by a partner company in Windsor because of its proximity to automakers.
Legros said the local firm is in the process of developing a new product for the mining and forestry sector, and will make an announcement about that in the future.
