Episode 319: How Garage Is Fixing the Broken Secondary Market for Fire Apparatus with Martin Hunt

Episode notes

The secondary market for fire apparatus runs on Facebook groups, newspaper classifieds, and local auctions. A small town in Texas budgeted $100,000 for a used truck sale. Garage got them $1.3 million. That is what happens when you put infrastructure behind a market that has never had any.

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Martin Hunt , co-founder and CEO of Garage , built what did not exist. He started fighting fires at 15, served 6 years as a Firefighter/EMT, then walked away from Goldman Sachs when a buddy called from the fire service with a problem nobody had solved.

In this episode, Kevin sits down with Martin to walk through how the platform works, what it takes to earn trust from risk-averse public sector buyers, and why used apparatus deserves to be taken seriously as a procurement strategy.

Topics covered:

- The origin story: a buddy's call and a marketplace that didn't exist

- How Garage solved the two-sided marketplace problem

- Navigating bureaucracy and de-risking for public sector buyers

- Freight solved: instant quotes, price lock, and Garage owns the risk

- Trust infrastructure: verified organizations, payments, and virtual inspections

- AI-powered appraisals: the Kelley Blue Book for fire trucks

- Extended warranties and third-party inspections

- Why nobody built this before 2023

- The case for buying used: cost, availability, and 1,500-day delivery quotes on new apparatus

- Beyond fire trucks: ambulances, EMS equipment, and more

- Servant leadership and the Drum Major Instinct as company culture

So take a listen to hear what he has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro
2. 2:17 The pain of the secondary market
3. 7:27 Obstacles getting started
4. 9:38 How departments buy used apparatus
5. 14:52 Extended warranties on used equipment
6. 15:35 Knowing the equipment's condition
7. 18:03 Building trust in the marketplace
8. 26:48 The nostalgia of old rigs
9. 32:23 Ambulances too
10. 34:02 What Garage has learned
11. 36:42 Words to live by
12. 38:55 Website walkthrough
13. 45:31 Wrap-up

Questions answered in this episode

What problem was Garage built to solve in the fire service?

Martin Hunt says it was painful to see communities sell fire apparatus for cents on the dollar to people who would not use it for its intended purpose, rather than letting a less fortunate fire department somewhere else in America use it to keep a community safe. The platform helps towns and cities trade their assets efficiently across the country.

Hear it at 0:00

How does Garage handle the cost of freight and delivery?

The platform offers instant freight quoting so buyers know the total cost upfront, and Garage owns the risk if freight costs go higher than quoted. If delivery ends up costing more than the estimate, the fire department is not stuck with the extra bill.

Hear it at 9:38

Does Garage offer warranties on used fire apparatus?

Yes. Martin Hunt says Garage partnered with an insurance company to offer aftermarket warranties that cover critical components, and buyers can get an instant quote with a click of a button on any listing.

Hear it at 12:45

How does Garage help departments know what their apparatus is worth?

The platform has a free appraisal tool that runs against one of the largest data sets of fire apparatus transactions in the world, refreshed every 30 days. Martin Hunt gives an example of a Delaware chief who thought a 26-year-old tanker was worth $30,000, but the appraisal showed it could sell for much more, and it sold for about $118,000.

Hear it at 19:09

What categories of equipment does Garage support beyond fire trucks?

Ambulances are one of the largest and most popular categories. The platform also supports stretchers, both used and refurbished, and serves fire departments, private agencies, and hospital systems across all categories.

Hear it at 32:57

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 319 transcript

How Garage Is Fixing the Broken Secondary Market for Fire Apparatus with Martin Hunt

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Martin Hunt

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Martin Hunt: Communities either sell their assets for cents on the dollar to someone who's not going to use the asset for its intended purpose, rather than allowing a less fortunate fire department somewhere else in America, use it to keep a community safe. That is painful for me to see. And so then we have to figure out, OK, well, how do we help a town city's fire departments trade their assets in an efficient way and do so on a platform that allows them to do it across

[0:29] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to the Smart Firefighting Podcast. Kevin Sofen here, where we [inaudible 0:58] when he called you Yeah.

[2:17] Martin Hunt: Yeah, I guess maybe helpful. [inaudible 2:19] buying something on secondary market, something that we all know the pain of. And so, buddy of mine who was running this for my department called me, and basically just said, Hey, I know that when we used to do it was for [inaudible 2:41] in all 50 states, Alaska and [inaudible 3:57]

[4:09] Kevin Sofen: a challenge where the drivers, don't really have any value in being there unless there [inaudible 4:16]

[4:39] Martin Hunt: there was something that was going, that didn't make sense, and that was [inaudible 4:54] in an efficient way and do so allows them to And that was part of the software that we had to build [inaudible 6:02] the line and their word of that spreads pretty quickly because you end up telling [inaudible 7:01]

[7:27] Kevin Sofen: and the dollars maybe it was it not maybe as hard is a what kind of obstacles did you encounter with getting people say hey you know what maybe I would sell it on here as opposed to what we're normally doing it does seem like this is the idea of making more money

[8:13] Martin Hunt: a percentage, success fee, on the purchase. And so if you sell something hundred dollars, meaning that no customer ever has a moment where there is less money in their pocket than the day before they were working with us. So when you the only and the only time that Garage is a business makes money is when your fire your fire department ends up with more in your pocket than you would have otherwise had. That is [inaudible 8:46]

[9:08] Kevin Sofen: I mean these are large vehicles that need insurance and, Grant you're talking if you're the going from California to Maine [inaudible 9:18]

[9:38] Martin Hunt: customer seat is you go to your board and you and you tell them we want to buy a used engine and we want to spend a hundred thousand dollars on it. And then your board says, okay, is that all that you need? Well, it's going to cost us the money to get it delivered. And it's okay. How much is that? Like, we need to know the total cost is going to be a thousand dollars is going to be $10,000 to get delivered. Like, I don know. Well, then it becomes really hard to make a decision because now your board or your mayor or your fleet manager is like, I can't sign off on this until you tell me how much it's going to cost. And so we thought about it from that perspective from if I'm sitting in a customer seat, I need to know a no BS, answer as to how much it's going to cost to get this thing delivered. And so that's why we did the instant freight quoting. Now what does that mean for us? It means that one, we had to build an instant freight calculator that works. And so we spent a lot of time with our software engineers to build that part of the solution. So that was difficult, but then we do that. And then the question becomes, what happens when things go wrong customer would have to bear that weight, meaning you buy the truck for $100, the freight's gonna cost $5,000, suddenly the freight goes to $10,000 and you're stuck with the bill. Well we said, no, Garage should own that risk. And so that is built into our business model, that is built into the solution that we provide to our customers so that the fire department, the town, the city that is making a purchase gets to take away all of the guesswork for themselves and can sleep well at night knowing that the number that was given to them is the number that it's going to cost to get this thing delivered.

[11:31] Kevin Sofen: That's awesome. Well, I mean, that's just another way to make the fire service and the fire chief feel that much more comfortable purchasing something in a Garage. And that gets me thinking of my next question. I live in a home, I've been outfitting it with various stuff. And one thing we've been trying to do is get some new furniture for a patio. And I had this issue where I was on Facebook marketplace and it looked all good and I saw some of the photos and then ultimately we had one situation where we wanted to go look at it and it was completely different than the photos. And we had another situation where it looked really great, the photos were perfect, but then it was just like this spam bot that was just trying to get us to wire money to some account. So I had two situations where I was thinking about, of like, wow, think about the magnitude of, instead of doing this on like a $. half a million dollar, half a million dollar a [inaudible 12:31]

[12:45] Martin Hunt: marketplaces can really be meaning that we can more seamlessly create a department to department transaction and allow for those departments to build a relationship. One of the ways in which that happens is we have [inaudible 13:30] and ... to have a conversation about the unit that they're buying or selling. As an additional extension to that, one of the things that we did now a couple of years ago is we built out a program with an insurance company to offer warranties. And so now, if you're buying a – I'm using a $100,000 number, it doesn't matter. It could be $30,000, it could be $300,000. But you're buying a used engine for $100,000. Now you can buy an aftermarket warranty to make sure that the critical components are covered and that you can make sure that when that truck hits, your doorstep, it is ready to go and serve its purpose for your community.

[14:52] Kevin Sofen: Sorry, click into that more. You actually are providing an extended warranty on used use equipment that's being purchased?

[14:58] Martin Hunt: Yeah, that's right. And so that's one of the things that really provides a lot of value to our customers is that there are insurance products that will own this risk for you so that you as a fire department, a town, a city, don't have to own this risk. And we make it as easy as a click of a button. And so you can run an instant calculator on any listing. So if you see a listing for X number of dollars, you can know that it's gonna cost you to make up a number $3,000 to add a warranty policy onto that. And you can then take that into consideration when you're deciding if that is the right purchase for.

[15:35] Kevin Sofen: And then what about truly knowing the status of the equipment? Granted, I imagine, I think about some of these companies and other industries, whether it's like notoriously the whole I love with the water bottle industry, it's all like self-regulated and it's like, oh yeah, the water quality is good and the bottling is good and there's a lot of these other nuances. When you have, when you're evaluating the status of the engine and the pump and the ladder and all this stuff, how are you finding and getting and providing a third party verified status of this is exactly the status of this engine? And again, knowing it's not new, but it's used, it's in good condition, and maybe it's good, it's probably gotten there at 10 years of life. How are you doing that to ensure that it's a third party, valid, fair opinion?

[16:29] Martin Hunt: Yeah, great question. There's kind of two layers to this. The first is the self-reported layer, meaning we have a messaging platform that's built into the product, meaning buyers and sellers send each other's messages directly on the platform. Part of what that looks like is most departments get their regular pump testing, ladder testing, DOT inspections. They can send the PDF versions of those inspection reports directly to an interested buyer. And so that's one third party element, which is that you're taking, you pick a brand, you have your Pierce engine, you take the engine to your local Pierce dealer for regular maintenance. And then you get that maintenance report, and you can actually send the PDF of that or a scan of that to the department they're buying. That's layer number one. Layer number two is we offer an optional third party inspection that can be ordered by buyers. So when you're in the last stage of making your purchase decision, you can actually pay for someone to go out and do that third party inspection so that you have a good idea of what you're potentially purchasing. All of this is just adding in layers of protection so that people can choose their own adventure, so to speak. This has been happening for decades. What is different here is the efficiency at which it's done and the length at which people are able to travel so that when someone is selling a fire truck to someone that is 1,400 miles away, it feels as easy as buying a toy one on Amazon rather than haggling with someone on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

[18:03] Kevin Sofen: And one of the challenges, but I guess also opportunities for the marketplace, is that there is a value to something and there's a value that someone's someone else is willing to pay, but it's always the challenge of whoever's trying to sell it's trying to sell for the most amount, whoever's buying it wants to buy it for the least amount, and in general, you could kind of think of doing a little wind test, you're like, I don't know, I think it's 500 grand or 200 grand, I don't know, I'm just kind of shooting in the wind. And I've seen on the platform this idea of this AI power of appraisals and just appraising of how to truly know what it's worth, and I imagine you have to have the photos and do the inspections and these all kind of go into it. But because again, there's so many customized nuances within the American fire apparatus market with these different chassis and pump capacities, it's very multi-factorial. But how do you get in a, and I also think of like and I look at Zillow and I'm like, how does Zillow have be able to know how much these houses cost? And I know there's got to be some model there, but yeah, dive into the appraisal process. How's it work and yeah, break it down.

[19:09] Martin Hunt: So think about some other areas of our life where we are buying very expensive things. So you mentioned a couple of examples. Zillow is one, you're buying a home. They have this estimate feature that your home is worth. Each home is unique. Each home is at a very specific address with a very specific build, right? Same thing with cars. You have a Kelly blue book value for your car. The Garage appraisal tool is just that for fire trucks because we have one of the largest data sets of transactions of fire apparatus in the world. And so what that means is you can come give the basic details of your apparatus, it runs against that data set of thousands of vehicles that have sold that is refreshed every 30 days. So there's always new data coming into the system. And then you get a price, their price range really, that tells you how much it may be worth on the market. And this has been grace for a lot of our customers saving their communities In Delaware, our chief thought that we were gonna get $30,000 for our used tanker. Our used tanker is What is was? 26 years old it is it's getting up there and he thought Max's is gonna be $30,000 He runs it through the appraisal. So the appraisal tool He says no way like actually no way. I said, okay give it 30 days Let's list it on the platform and see what happens a matter of weeks later. It sells for almost exactly 125 K They ended up making an offer and the offer was like slightly below. It's like a hundred and eighteen thousand and that it ends up on its way down the road heading to the next department hundreds of miles away to serve that community for many years to come if it weren't for that if it weren It weren't for them running it through the appraisal tool. They would have undervalued Their asset because they didn't know how much it was work they were kind of to your point, putting two fingers in the air and trying to get a feel for it, but not actually knowing how much it's worth. And that's where data can really be a valuable asset to our customers. And if you're trying to sift through that data manually by yourself, that's really hard. And no one has time for that. And so instead we invested a lot of time. And resources into building a tool that can then serve our customers and use data to allow our customers to make data backed decisions. And I should mention it's free. We don't charge our customers for it. All of the money that we invested into the tool is free. You can go and appraise your assets using Garage's appraisal tool and not list on Garage. There's no, there's no obligation to doing anything. And that is one of the ways in which we are able to give back to the fire service because our view is at the very is at least everyone should at least have the ability to understand the data that's accessible to them. and leverage it to serving their communities.

[22:05] Kevin Sofen: I mean when I first met you at Red Sky Summit and I was thinking about this concept, it really struck me with like, wait this hasn't been done before, and granted this idea of a digital platform marketplace is new-ish, but there's been marketplaces forever. I guess objectively asking you that question, you know, why hadn't this been done before and why So why Martin Hunt at the right place, right time, you know, figuring it out I mean.

[22:34] Martin Hunt: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think why I chose to spend time trying to make a more efficient solution is I care really deeply about the fire service. I joined the fire service at a very young age and it was and still is really painful for me to see communities either sell their assets for cents on the dollar to someone who's not going to use the asset for its intended purpose. So someone selling an engine for cents on the dollar to someone who's going to rip the cat engine out of it and repurpose it for something else, rather than allowing a less fortunate fire department somewhere else in America, use it to keep their community safe. That is painful for me to see. On the flip side it's painful for me to see fire departments across the country say, we are looking for a tanker that is between this dollar amount and this dollar amount and we can't find it. We are doing everything that we can, but I'm a volunteer fire chief and I have a full-time job. And it's already hard enough running the department, let alone spending dozens of hours cold calling other fire chiefs or scouring the internet in random Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc., dealing with a sketchy broker. That was painful for me to see. And so that's part of the motivation in terms of why some of these things couldn't be done more efficiently before. If you think about it, the effect is the same as two fire departments finding each other via a cold call or things being sold at local auction. The difference is the level of efficiency that it's done at. Getting a process that would take months before and boiling it down to into a matter of days, getting what would be dozens of hours [inaudible 24:06] possible before. I think a great example is our instant freight quoting tool. We use a lot of technology that goes in and backs that. I don't think that would have been possible even five years ago. Part of it is a point in time of the solution was not possible to create before. Then why we chose to focus on the problem is because we feel particularly passionate about the community of customers that we serve and the fact that we are in a position where we can do something about it." When I quit my job to go all-in on building Garage, we had no funding. The product wasn't built yet. I was living off of my savings. I just moved in with my girlfriend. I felt so passionately about solving the problem that I said, I'm going to go all-in because I think that the country deserves a better solution. And I think that communities across America deserve better. And the same mission that we started the company with,

[25:15] Kevin Sofen: cities, time and money, is [inaudible 25:45] for, gets put into use with a good department that you trust and know. And it's not going to be shipped and just pulled for parts and just turned into a junkyard dog. It's going to be something that you know is going to a good home. And talk to me about the nostalgia of fire trucks. I mean, one thing I know about firefighters is they love their fire trucks. And I think there's also that appreciation. They know that it's going to a good home when it's time end-of-life or, you know, I don't want to say end-of-life, the evolution of life. Yeah, tell me about the nostalgia and how that plays into Garage.

[26:48] Martin Hunt: The nostalgia is big. I'll give you a personal anecdote here. The engine that I rode to my first fire when I was a junior at 15 years old recently sold on Garage. That was a bittersweet moment because you're seeing an asset to the community, an engine that has served our We've been sent videos of customers of ours crying, as their trucks leave on a flatbed. I mean, this is an emotional moment. I,

[27:29] Kevin Sofen: No shame, no shame at all.

[27:31] Martin Hunt: The nostalgia is like super real. And so we try to celebrate the moment. And so part of that is we tell the story of our customers. We do that on our social media page. We have started a motion around gifting to our customers. And so I won't spoil it because I don't want anyone to see it coming, but we do a random selection of customers each month and send them memorabilia to memorialize the apparatus that they sold on the marketplace. And so we try to do some small things to really celebrate for our customers, but the nostalgia is real. And I think what really gives everyone like a, it's the sweet part of the bittersweet feeling is to know that usually the main reason for someone selling their fire apparatus on Garage is they've replaced it with something else. And so it's a really cool moment when you were able to purchase a new piece of fire apparatus for a lot, I mean, it's gotten increasingly expensive That is going to serve your community better than the 10-year-old one did. So that's a sweet moment. And then it's even more sweet to know that the unit that is no longer going to serve your community is now going to serve another community hundreds of thousands away. That gives you a good feeling. . [inaudible 28:42] for a long time to another community that's gonna benefit from it for years to come.

[28:59] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I imagine that gives a lot of comfort and solace and peace and also I guess just excitement knowing that the truck that you've had for 10, 20 years is going to a good home . [inaudible 29:12] just in the car markets, and I have a friend that works at True Car, I talked to him about just the used car market, and the used car market is same, but different, but obviously with the new apparatus market, it's just, the prices are crazy. I mean, you look at the average price of dump trucks, and trash trucks, and all these other things, where they've gone up, but not at the rate that fire trucks have gone up. And not to get political, I don't wanna put you on the hot seat or anything, but what is the challenge with the new apparatus, and why is buying used something that people should consider from a cost perspective, a speed to acquire perspective, and just all those, so what's the Martin Ha take on that?

[30:03] Martin Hunt: Yeah, it's a really good question with a lot of nuance in it. I think there are, there's kind of two sets of buyers. You have people who have always bought exclusively used because they just have never been able to afford the new. And then you have people who've done a little bit of both, and then people who are doing it for the first time. For the people who are doing it for the first time, or the people who do a little bit of both, it's a matter of every fire, almost every fire department in the country is running under on a tight budget. Maybe the most fortunate fire departments are not, but everyone's running on a tight budget. And so deciding where you invest your budget is a really important decision and so figuring out where buying a used piece of apparatus as a reserve unit or buying it as a frontline unit is a strategic decision, especially when you look at about how you're going to replace that to serve the community. You want to go to pick your manufacturer and order a new one, that can take years. We tell us they were quoted 1500 days for the delivery of their new engines. They're ordering twins, identical twin engines, 1500 days for the two to get delivered.'s. [inaudible 31:16] population growth. We have a lot of customers whose communities are changing rapidly. And by the time that 1500 days has passed and their new engines have come, the population of their town may have increased by 50% or doubled. And so then what? You need something today as a stock. And so then that's another part of the equation. And so everyone has their own unique circumstances for why they are purchasing a piece of apparatus, both new and used. And we are there to be supportive throughout the process. And in almost every case, there is a way that we can help. That's just I just the appraisal tool or whether that's actually helping with the transaction either by helping them sell surplus apparatus that they don't need anymore or buy used to complement or expand their fleet. we can be a helping hand in all of those processes and parallel work together.

[32:23] Kevin Sofen: And we've talked a lot about fire trucks and just to give the nuances of the new market and the advantages of considering used and all the wonderful features that make Garage what it is. But what about, speaking of public safety, there's a lot of expensive equipment and there's other equipment besides fire trucks from ambulances and also in the law enforcement from police cars and also thinking of this expensive equipment like whether it's rescue equipment or stuff like that, is are you dabbling into other stuff besides fire trucks? Where are you at with that?

[32:57] Martin Hunt: Yeah, we haven't talked about EMS that much but it is important to talk about ambulances are, one of our largest most popular categories. We have a ton of ambulances that sell on the platform. Both fire department owned, private agency owned, hospital system owned,. Private dealer owned, kind of across the board. Our mission is to help America's cities save time and money. And so there are many categories that we support, but fire is our largest category and every product that we launched from the appraisal tool to the instant freight quoting tool to all the categories that we have launched, including fire apparatus, ambulances, stretchers, we have a lot of used and refurbished stretchers being bought and sold on the platform. All of those categories and products have been launched with our mission in mind, which is if there is something that we can do to leverage our platform to help America's cities and towns save time and money, we will do it. And so those are just a few ways in which we do it today. And I'm sure over time we will continue to add on products and categories to the towns and cities that we serve today in a deeper capacity.

[34:02] Kevin Sofen: Love it, Martin. Just to kind of wrap up here too, I'm curious, as you've built Garage as you've built Garage from literally nothing to now, how many employees and what are some high-level metrics you got for Garage from employees and vehicles moved?

[34:16] Martin Hunt: A few things I would share. I mean, just in the Fire category alone, we have a team of over 20 people that are dedicated to the success of the Fire category. Wow. These are full-time employees, not contractors. These are these are people who spend all day thinking about how we can serve the Fire service more intentionally. That is across all 50 States. So we have customers in all 50 States, Alaska and Hawaii included. And there is not municipality in the country that we cannot serve. And so we make sure that we have a dedicated account manager for all of those people too. So to talk to a real person. You can, we think that human connection element is lost in a lot of business today, we want to maintain that human connection element. So that's a huge part of to the culture behind the business that I think that is missed a lot. And I think in the fire category in particular, something to call out is we have several pieces of fire apparatus bought and sold on the platform every day, 365 days a year.

[35:15] Kevin Sofen: That's amazing. That's incredible.

[35:17] Martin Hunt: That's really cool to see. Literally as we sleep, our apparatus has moved across the country every day. And we work with municipalities, small and large. We work with one of the largest cities in a given state and we also work with the smallest city. All of our conference rooms are named after customers of ours. So like the conference room I'm sitting in right now is a small town of 800 people in Illinois, Elvis Island, which is in Yates City, Illinois. Then the conference room next to me is a large city, one of the larger cities, in West Virginia. I think that's something that's really important to understand is who Garage serves. We serve towns and cities and cities, both small and large, and because of the nation-wide aspect of the marketplace, there isn't a corner of the country that we can't help

[36:01] Kevin Sofen: service. Kudos to you, man, and the continued business that you bring into life, and you get this force of good behind it and love the human element. As much as I do love AI tools, you can't AI your way out of everything, and it's it's really good to have humans in the loop, particularly from a customer service account management perspective. And as you've pulled this rabbit out of a hat and built this marketplace platform and done such a great job as an entrepreneur, have there been any, are there any quotes or kind of words of wisdom that you live by as far as things

[36:42] Martin Hunt: There's one that I talk about a lot that I actually learned as I was going through one of my, I actually think it was the basic fire-fighting class that I took at Delaware State Fire School. And a professor shared a Martin Luther King's sermon on the projector screen. And it was from his drum major instinct sermon. And he says, if you want to be important, wonderful. If you want to be recognized, wonderful. If you want to be great, wonderful. But recognize he who is graced among you shall be a servant, that's the new definition of greatness. And so when we talk about what that means for our team, it's that we are a servant for our customers. We are a servant for those, for our customers, which are largely fire departments, fire chiefs, lieutenants, rank and or [inaudible 37:43]

[38:12] Kevin Sofen: many [inaudible 38:14] is a great option to consider. Yeah, next time, and maybe you want to do a quick little home demo. Just kind of see what it looks like. I mean, any chance you could do a quick little demo right now, or like a quick two minute thing?

[38:55] Martin Hunt: Yeah, happy to. So, this is the home page. I think the biggest thing that, like one way that you can think about Garage is it's like an eBay for the Fyre service. And so, I have had multiple customers tell me that they spend endless hours browsing. So if you go here as an example, and you go to like fire apparatus, you can just browse all of the fire apparatus that are available on Garage. And there's like is like practically an endless list. You can also look at specific categories that you want. So let's say you're looking for an engine. You can go here and find an engine that meets your department's needs. Let's click on, this one as an example. Something that I think is really important to understand are these like call to action buttons here. And so this engine is a 2007 Pierce Ken And So I'm going to put in my parents' zip code in Delaware, click calculate freight, and you get an instant freight quote. And then this freight quote is good for a month. And then you get an instant freight quote on it delivered. So this will go from Iowa to Delaware, which is like most of the way across the country for $3,600. And you know that quote is going to be good. You can calculate warranty. So you can go here, select your warranty duration. So I'm going to select one year warranty and get an instant warranty quote on what it's going to cost to cover my new purchase as an optional purchase. You don't have to purchase warranty, but it's just another resource that's there for you and your department. Same thing for virtual walk-around. I think one of the things that is convenient here is a calendar automatically pops up. And so let's say I know our company meetings are on the third Monday of the month, and I want everyone to be able to see this truck and get an understanding of the pros, the cons, and speak to the current owner of the apparatus. I can go here, click on a date, click on a time, and that will automatically send a meeting request to the seller. And then it gives them the option to respond to it and say, I'm not free at this time. Can you do this time? And then you can do a high definition video walk around of the unit. The one other thing I will call out, not to overwhelm us, is the appraisal tool. So I click on start appraisal. This is the, let's call it like appraisal tool light version. So you can come here and you select your category. So you can say like, I have an engine. It's a 2004 Pierce dash with 40,000 miles on it and it has a 12-150 gallon per minute pump and a 750 gallon tank. Click start appraisal. It's going to ask me for condition. I'll say conditions good. I'm looking to sell zero to three months and I'm looking to maximize my return. I click continue. It immediately runs it through a data set of thousands of trucks that have sold on the marketplace, gives you a sense of what the true market value is, how much you might be able to sell it if you're selling for it to sit on the market for a little bit longer. So if you know you don't need it out for six months, maybe you're willing to list a little bit higher but let it sit for longer. Or if you want a quick sale you can sell it for faster at a lower price. There's also a request detailed appraisal button here, which allows you to schedule a call with a specialist from the team who can actually help you walk through the appraisal and walk through what your apparatus may be worth. One thing to flag is there's two different ways to buy and sell in Garage. One is a buy now feature. So that's what we're looking at here [inaudible 42:56] thousand. And you can auction it via the online platform. But all of those same services that we mentioned before, so freight, virtual walk around, financing, warranty, are all still available on the auctions just as they would be on the buy now. So the buyer experience is very similar. From a seller's, point of view, their listings get the maximum nationwide reach because of those value-added services that are available on both. But you kind of have two different formats that you can choose to sell.

[43:46] Kevin Sofen: What would be the rationale for a seller to list it versus doing an auction? Just kind of to try and game it a little bit?

[43:54] Martin Hunt: I think there's a couple of things. I think there are some assets that do better at auction than they do via buy now. So you can think of things that these things that are maybe closer to end of end of life is an example.

[44:06] Kevin Sofen: Sometimes,

[44:07] Martin Hunt: depending on what state you're in, you may be required to sell via auction. So that's another reason why you may use the auction product. And then the last is there's a time bound aspect to it. So this unit will be sold in seven days. So if you're in a time crunch, the auction can be really good for that. Versus if you listed by now, the average time to sell is less than a month. So on average you will sell in less than a month, ., but it could take longer if you are really trying to squeeze every dollar out of it and you price it really aggressively. That's all processes that a specialist on the team is happy to walk someone through because to your point it's really hard to get a sense for what the best option might be and that is where the specialists on the team are happy to serve as a resource for a customer so that they don't have to think through that by themselves.

[44:55] Kevin Sofen: Kudos. I mean, I clicked around the website but actually seeing those buttons click and how and just you click a they can get the exact spec, the exact Richard door and go straight to city council show how you want to buy this new rig or on the flip side how easy it is to sell it with the appraisal tool. So what a great technology for the FHIR service, something that is a really purpose built, very simple, practical innovation and kudos to you and excited to see you at FDIC excited to see what Garage does in 2026. What are you most excited about in 2026? Any other final things you're looking forward to the rest of the year?

[45:31] Martin Hunt: Yeah definitely excited for FDIC. As a broader team we go to dozens of conferences a year. Many of, we go to many state chiefs conferences, we'll go to regional events as well. FDIC is definitely my favorite. And so we're excited to be there. We have a booth this year in Lucas Oil Stadium. No, sorry, in the convention center this year. We were in Lucas Oil last year. In the convention center right next to the Rosenbauer booth. And so definitely for those making it to FDIC, they should definitely come find us there and I would love to meet in person.

[46:01] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Well, check out shopGarage.com. and keep up the good work and we'll be in touch.

[46:05] Martin Hunt: Thanks for having me, Kevin, really appreciate it.

[46:08] Kevin Sofen: Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Firefighting podcast today. If you enjoyed what you heard and got any value, please drop us a rating, leave us a comment, or reach out to us on social media. Have a great day, and together, we can advance the future of smart firefighting.