Huron County company making ‘decontamination trailers’ for fire departments, with orders lining up

An Exeter trailer company is making decontamination trailers for fire departments and wildfire crews in Canada. Scott Miller explains.

A Huron Park business is manufacturing a new product that’s already a hot commodity - a mobile decontamination trailer to be used by Ontario firefighters at the scene of emergencies.

“If you’re contaminated with a substance the idea of getting back into a cab of a fire truck for instance and then going back to the base. Well now you’ve contaminated everybody and everything in the midst of that,” said Trailer Factory President and Owner Andy Orr. “So the idea is to clean it on site if you can, and then you can hop back in the cab and everybody’s got a safe clean environment.”

The mobile decontamination trailers come with their own showers, lockers, water tank, wastewater tank, and power supply. The first one shipped out last week with six more destined for fire departments in southern Ontario.

“It actually originally started out from a bunch of municipal fires down in Wheatley Ontario if you’re familiar with them. They had an explosion right on the main street,” shared Trailer Factory Vice-President and Owner Tom Enns. “The Ministry [of Labour] realized at that point in time that there was a real need for units like this to get these guys cleaned up before they go home to see their families.”

While the decontamination trailers are a totally new product for The Trailer Factory, this kind of mobile trailer is not new to Orr and Enns - who have grown from just three employees when they opened nine years ago to 74 employees today.

“Our main product line is portable washrooms, and you know we’ve kind of watched that space grow over the last number of years where it’s become legislation that on a job site you need to have portable sanitation with hot water,” said Orr. “This kind of dovetails right in nicely behind it where you know you should solve the problem while you’re there.”

Orr and Enns are already seeing success with the Trailer Factory’s newest venture. While they’ve got seven decontamination trailers to build first, there are more orders coming in - including one from the City of Vancouver.

“We think there’s a huge market for not only commercial and residential fire departments but also in the forest fighting industry,” said Enns. “We see a lot of need for it out west where you see the big forest fires and things like that.”