Santa is coming to town this week.

It’s no mystery what he’s dropping off — it’s a pallet of our presold, brand-new Redbeard Covers. This is the most exciting project we’ve worked on in a long time. It won’t set the world on fire or anything like that, but it’s our baby, and we’re pretty proud of it! The name Redbeard Cover is a story for another day.

The Redbeard Cover is the result of a mostly positive, symbiotic relationship with our clients. We install equipment-tracking devices and cameras in their vehicles and machinery, and they mostly pay us on time. We mostly do our job correctly, show up when we should, and complete the work.

All that time together means plenty of time to talk. Over the years, many of our clients asked for a better way to mount equipment-tracking devices on heavy industrial gear. So, we decided to give it a shot.

We started with drawings on paper, then cardboard cutouts, and then brought in a local engineer/fabricator — and got it wrong. Really wrong. So, we went back to the drawing board. After many, many prototypes, we tested it at our clients’ facilities. We incorporated a lot of their suggestions. Some changes weren’t even said out loud — they just made the edits themselves during installation.

Now, the final version (well, version 1) arrives this week. We’re going to feel a lot of pride as each one of these heads out the door. It doesn’t hurt that it’s stainless steel with welded corners and, frankly, looks pretty badass (sorry about the language, Mom).

It’s a great way to wrap up the year and kick off the next.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for sure!