The Driveway
Groomer Story
Hi,
I'm Bob Gendron and I invented the Driveway Groomer.
If you are looking at this site, you probably either
paid "professionals" to
do your gravel driveway or dragged everything from box
springs to logs and toiled with rakes and shovels to
make your driveway usable and look good. It finally dawned
on me that just about every "professional installed" gravel
driveway ends up in relatively poor shape eventually.
And the professionals told me that it "must be done
professionally" to get good results. Problem is
that these were the same "professionals" that
put mine and your driveway in, in the first place. So,
when I got a welder for Christmas from my family years
ago and I welded something that worked OK for me above.
It was just a bunch of scrap steel and it was cut with
an abrasive blade on a skill saw. It had some bolts that
I welded up to hold some weights from an old weight set.
It wasn't that well built and as neighbors and I used
it, it got all bent up. But, it kept our driveways in
good shape.
I continued to think
about ways to make it better and easier to use. It also
needed to be stronger and have a better weighting system.
So off to the garage I went to make something else. This
time I used tubing and welded a blade at an angle for
strength. Tried some pretty funky weighting systems too
as shown above. I just made this small one to tow behind
the garden tractor. Although it was better than what
I had before, I still didn't like it because I had to
disconnect it at the end of the driveway to turn around
and I couldn't weight it all the way or my garden tractor
wheels would spin.
Then, my wife Ginger
and I bought a truck camper that overhung out the back
and we wanted to tow our boat too. We had to purchase
a long extension to do that. When I saw that, it dawned
on me to put chains in both directions from an extended
pole out my receiver hitch. So back to the garage I went.
After many iterations and testing of weighting schemes,
blade configurations, height, materials and hardware
I came up with the prototype you see being used by a
coworker, Wally, to do a lawn after a dozer went through.
It was at that point that I gave thought to selling it
some day but never really put any effort into it because
I was pretty happy with what I had. Wally did about an
acre of loam up a pretty steep slope. I told Wally I
didn't design it for that but he decided to use it anyway
and it did a better job than I thought it would of yanking
out weeds and roots. He was happy anyway. Then I made
the 6 foot version you see being used on the site. No
more need to disconnect. It just went both ways. It was
great compared to everything else I used. I just looked
in the mirror and could go backwards or forwards. I could
work the rough section quickly and then just Groom the
rest. Lots of friends and neighbors started to use it
and everyone liked the results they got.
As it turns out, one
of the people who knew about it was the president of
a local manufacturing company whom I had known for the
last 15 years that manufactured products for a big company
that supplies homeowner products. He built a few real
ones for me to test. I loaned them to friends to try
and that's where the original pictures came from for
the website.
A little while later,
the homeowner products company contacted me to talk about
marketing it. I contacted a patent attorney before showing
them what I had. A search was conducted and a Provisional
Patent Application was filed and a subsequent utility
application. The company made an offer to license the
patent but my wife Ginger and I chose to turn them down
and give my oldest son Brian, a third year business student
at UNH, a shot at marketing it through this website. That's where BBG Innovations came from Brian, Bob, Ginger.
Having made this decision
is good for you the consumer as you will be paying easily
over 30% less than it was going to sell for because our
overhead is low. Any specialty product you buy like this
is marked up at least 100% through distribution. We have
come a long way with this and are proud of our product
and the service it provides to people like you. We tested
it over many miles of different terrain, it was tested
by the company that wanted to license it. You can't buy
it or anything like it anywhere else. It is extremely
rugged, easy to assemble and use, and will last decades
if not a lifetime. And most important, IT JUST PLAIN
WORKS! We did not skimp on quality at any point, from
machines to packaging. We want you to have a quality
product that works for you! |
