North America Traffic Celebrates 20 Years
Work zone traffic control and flagging device manufacturer North America Traffic, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and named Cavalier Industries its first factory representative handling regional sales and service responsibilities in Canada.
Factory resources will be dedicated to engineering, manufacturing and application support to North America Traffic’s marketing partners. Cavalier Industries is the first such partner, now the exclusive representative of NAT products for rental businesses and equipment dealers in Canada. Similar arrangements are in development for targeted regions in America.
The move is a far cry from 16 years ago when the company’s founder Peter Vieveen was sitting in his pickup truck, at the side of the road, wondering whether to pull the plug on his business. Vieveen had launched the world’s first remote controlled Automatic Flagger Assistance Device (AFAD) from his garage workshop in 1994.
Moving the company forward was Vieveen’s realization that solar arrays and LED lighting could solve many of the problems he saw with his units.
“As a project estimator, my original interest was to save costs on road and bridge construction. It was obvious, too, that flagging is a serious hazard for the workers on such congested jobsites. It was the switch to solar power that made my idea for AFADs practical.”
With new solar technology, improved long-life batteries and LED lights, a host of problems was eliminated from the flagger design. The trailer-mounted AFADs typically operate on long duty cycles, with days and weeks of continuous use.
Through continued improvements, Vieveen was able to move his company from his garage and more recently North America Traffic opened a new manufacturing facility and world headquarters in Port Colborne, Ontario, near Niagara Falls. The new office provides 20,000 sq ft of engineering and manufacturing space. After 20 years, design innovation remains the focus of Vieveen’s development team.
“Our latest major development reduces the cost for owners even further,” Vieveen reports. “With the light duty portable traffic signal we introduced in 2013, a single operator with a service truck can tow one or two units and quickly set up a traffic control zone. One person can easily position the trailer and set up the lights. It’s ideal for emergency response, and the batteries will keep it running for 10 days, even under cloudy skies.”
Today, the company manufactures eight different models of portable traffic signals, flashing beacons and flagging systems to meet all traffic control needs, and its products have been used on more than 3,000 projects across North America.
For more information, visit northamericatraffic.com
