We’re many things here at Alberta Carriage Supply. Teamsters, mechanics, champion “jerry riggers”. One of the things many people might not know about us is that we are also certified wheelwrights.
In the early 2000s, Dale took a course from Harry Harrison, then both Dale & Terry took the wheelwright training at the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon from Jack Shepard. Jack claimed that you had to do 100 wheels before you could call yourself a wheelwright.
We have surpassed that, and have now completed our 5000th wheel. Some have been part of a vehicle restoration, but some of them have just been dropped off as is. (Thanks, John Scott Productions for bringing your wheels to us, we appreciate it!)
We’ve racked up some impressive numbers
That’s 5000 wheels. The average wheel size we make is 42”. So, that’s a total of just over 650,000 inches. That’s more than 10 miles of steel and wood.
How long is 10 miles? It’s over 117 Canadian Football League fields or 322 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
And how much does 5,000 wheels weigh? Each foot of steel weighs 1 pound, so that’s 53,000 pounds (or 25 tonnes) of steel. That’s more than two semi-trucks or a small battalion of Army soldiers and their kit.
You might say that’s how we’ve maintained our youthful physique, messing around with steel and wood.
Wheelwright services you can count on
All joking aside, a lot of work and care goes into fitting the spokes and other aspects of rebuilding a wheel to ensure it is handsomely finished. We try to always exceed our customers’ expectations.
“I built a pair of wheels once for a customer who was restoring a wheeled slip,” remembers Terry. “I asked him to send me pictures of the finished project. He replied it would be a little while because he’d be putting the wheels on display in his living room and he didn’t care what his wife thought.”
We pride ourselves on providing you with the best solutions for putting your horse to work. Whether that means products, services or our expertise, we can fix it. Or if we can’t, we know who can.
In over 20 years of business, we’ve had the pleasure of working on lots of interesting projects. From extra large logging wheels, WWI Cannon wheels to miniature cart wheels we have heard, seen and done lots. It certainly makes us appreciate our forefathers and the settlers who had to be the true Jacks-of-all-trades to fix whatever broke on their equipment.
Tell us what you you need
And while we specialize in wood-spoked wheels, we can fix pretty much anything you can throw at us:
- Wheel need more – or less – dish?
- Want rubber added?
- Purchased a new and larger horse and need your vehicle resized to fit it?
- Maybe you just bought a piece of horse equipment and you want to make sure the wheels are safe before you hook up your horses?
- Or you’re going on a trip into the mountains and you want a professional opinion about whether your tires are in good enough shape?
