Mishap leads to invention.

• Author: FRANCZYK, WALTER
• Position: Jean-Yves Godin - Brief Article

Contractor Jean-Yves Godin had not planned to become an inventor. It happened quite unexpectedly. He was reversing a lawn tractor out of a pickup truck when the machine dislodged the two planks he had been using as a ramp. The tractor toppled, tossing him upside down. Godin hit the ground, hard and painfully, he recalls.

"I fell backwards (off the tractor) and for three months could hardly walk," Godin says. "I said, 'there's got to be a better way to load a machine.'"

Godin, owner of Godin Enterprises, invented that better way - a patented, folding ramp, called the Get-In Ramp. Made of laminated hardwood and high-grade steel, it can be used to safely and easily load snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, snowblowers and yes, lawn tractors.

Compact and versatile, the award-winning invention has also moved golf carts, 45-gallon drums, large truck tires and even furniture.

With the help of his sons Yvan and Patrick, Godin and his wife Francoise manufactured the Get-In Ramp in a shop at the rear of their home in Kearns, a former gold mining hamlet near the Quebec border in northeastern Ontario.

"It's a family operation," Godin says. "If we have too much work, we hire local people, like students in the summer, for a few days to help us catch up."

The ramp weighs about 23 kilograms. When folded for storage or transport, it measures 10 x 15 centimetres and is 2.3 metres long. It fits in the back of a pickup truck with the tailgate shut and takes less than a minute to unfold as a 1.2 x 1.8-metre ramp, Godin says. It also comes equipped with chains...