The Gear Centre Group News

While going through some of his grandmother’s belongings, one of our Marketing staff members found this ‘Edmonton Gear Centre’ pin! We believe this original version of our logo was used in the 80s when all of Alberta still used the 403 area code. This year, The Gear Centre is celebrating our 45th year in the industry.

The Gear Centre Group would like to acknowledge the dedicated efforts of the tireless truck drivers and support staff who are keeping our supply chain moving during this critical time.

A message from our Chief Operating Officer, Kurt Gibson:

Dear Valued Customers,

During these troubling times, I wanted to reach out to you all personally to assure you that we at The Gear Centre Group are doing everything we can to ensure that we are protecting both our staff and you, our customers, from the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.  We want to assure you that we are taking all possible precautions with the wellbeing of everyone in mind.

Over the past week we have put several protocols in place to help protect against this serious concern.  Some of these steps include:

•  Enforcing social distancing. We are effectively doing this in several ways:
  • All of our parts and service counters are in the process of being marked in 2 meter increments to help properly judge a safe distance between customers.
  • Our staff will only be allowed to service one customer at a time at our counters to help us maintain the safe social distance.
  • Our staff will be happy to load your pick up for you, simply inform our front counter staff that you are there for a pickup and then you may remain in your vehicle while our staff loads the part into your vehicle for you to minimize the social contact involved.
  • We are committed to wiping down and disinfecting our door handles and common public touch areas at a minimum every hour. Our service counters will be wiped down every hour or every five customers, whichever comes first.
  • Our delivery drivers will be issued masks to wear when dropping off at your location.  Should you have any drop off protocols in place in your organization, please inform our inside sales staff when you place your order for delivery, so that we can pass the information on to our drivers.
  • Our drivers will be equipped with their own pens for signing pick up documents, and will not be sharing the pen with anyone other than themselves.
  • All of our work stations will be disinfected before and after every shift.
  • Any staff that show symptoms of ANY illness will be sent home and not permitted to work their shift.
  • We will be keeping staff 2 meters from each other and you, our customers, at all times.
  • In some cases, if we are unable to ensure proper social distancing, we may need to ask customers to wait in their vehicles while we deal with other customers. Signage will be posted in our entrance ways with the social distancing protocols for each location.
  • During this difficult time we would like to encourage you to use credit cards for your purchases. We will be wiping down the POS machine with disinfectant after every transaction. This will keep the handling of cash down to a minimum.
• We have several of our behind the scenes positions working from remote locations to minimize the exposure.
• We will be staggering our shifts to lessen our exposure to this pandemic while ensuring our regular customer service levels are maintained.
• Our workshops will be undergoing a daily sanitizing process on all items that are common touch points in our daily service.
• Masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer will be made available to all staff that deal with you, our valued customer, to prevent transmission of viruses.
• We will be reducing our hours of operation from 8 AM – to 5 PM, Monday to Friday, and we will now be closed Saturday mornings in all locations. Should you require any parts or  service after hours or on the weekend, our on call service will still be available to you. Please note that there will be no call out charges for call out requests that are received Saturday mornings between 8 AM and noon.
•  Although many of our suppliers are also following their own pandemic protocols, and some delays may occur, we are currently not experiencing any delays. Our large inventories and unit down team are still available to assist any and all parts requirements. 
• Our business is considered an essential service, as such we are doing everything we can in order to support all the transport, long haul truckers,heavy equipment, public transit, first responders, medical personnel, and agricultural providers that continue to serve in this difficult time. Rest assured that we will continue to do everything we can to assist everyone, while doing our part to social distance and fight the spread of this pandemic.

We are truly committed to protecting everyone involved in our day to day operations to ensure that we are doing our part in this difficult time.

Regards,

Kurt Gibson
Chief Operating Officer
The Gear Centre Group of Companies

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our customers, friends, families and business partners!

The Gear Centre Group of Companies is helping vulnerable Canadians stay warm this year! The Gear Centre Group staff donated over 1000 items (toques, scarves, socks and mittens) to local homeless shelters including an additional 300 toiletry packs (toothbrushes, toothpaste and deodorant) provided by the company to help needy Canadians this holiday season. Here are some pictures of our team in Edmonton picking up the donations from the branches before dropping them off at Hope Mission.

The Gear Centre Group of Companies hosted a Christmas party for Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada, Alberta & N.W.T Chapter families for the second year in a row. The Gear Centre Group of Companies gave Christmas presents to 49 children from Wish Families. We would like to thank Sobeys, Save-On-Foods, Costco and Superstore for their generous donations that helped make lunch for nearly 100 people possible. Thank you so much to Ritchie Bros. for making their facility available to us again this year and we would also like to thank Positively Princess’d, Chips and the 501st Legion – Badlands Garrison for donating their time so generously.

This year the theme for the party was Comic Book Adventure. We created the character Gear Boy, and created custom ‘The Adventures of Gear Boy’ artwork to create a fun environment for the Christmas party. If you’re interested in learning more about The Adventures of Gear Boy click here to read a one-page comic we created for the party. Gear Boy faces off against the evil snowman Frostbite to save Christmas!

Children’s Wish is such a wonderful organization and we were honored to work with them again this holiday season. If you would like to learn more about how you can support Children’s Wish, visit www.childrenswish.ca

The Gear Centre & Pat’s Driveline took part in the 2019 Convoy For Hope – Atlantic on Saturday, August 24. An amazing event once again!

For more information on Convoy for Hope – Atlantic and what they do, visit convoyforhope-atlantic.com