{"id":78861,"title":"🚒 Garage - Helping fire departments buy \u0026 sell equipment","tagline":"Garage is a marketplace for used equipment, starting with firefighting equipment. ","body":"We’re [Martin Hunt](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-hunt-a3392999/) and [Alaz Sengul](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alazsengul/), founders of [Garage](https://www.withgarage.com/).\n\n**How it started**\n\nIn 2015, I joined my local fire department as a volunteer _(young, but not as young as I was in this picture)_. In the years that followed, I completed 1500+ hours of training, got certified as an EMT, and started working as a paid firefighter at neighboring departments.\n\n![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/Kdv8ZUe-MfNOZvEskv1GQU0aXpYs1XqlrUwY4XCc4PV2ZZMzc0lbdQJm8a7ak0FuA8rBCRPyl2t2L0Jf2AbW3dlLLERHv8SJEiQgnxc4RdLqJwItDewo67zmGmcA1hTZOjnl1GDgAlfZS0_jXgLWFLs)\n\nWhen my department bought new equipment or a new truck, we would turn to Facebook groups and word of mouth to sell our used equipment to other departments in need. For perspective, a new fire truck costs $1.5 to $2.5 million, with used trucks ranging in cost from $50,000 to $1 million.\n\nIt was a super frustrating process for us:\n\n* Countless hours spent trying to find buyers in-need\n* Navigating and losing money to scammers \n* Coordinating independent logistics and financing providers\n\n![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/Nlia4iAX3VLFWzUeLBsQgbZu6fiSPTbxgaMbOSV0D2QyN0WD0HzLfP0KiAikBAqB0ne8IDW9gcko8r0V4bJ888yzOv_nTGlxYG-VTWtKW3WeJ7PEG2Ddg3rOgPGS6VVzU6ck2assojpGN4F8Wv0pFWQ)\n\n**Garage’s Solution**\n\nGarage helps fire departments buy and sell used equipment in seconds rather than days. Our marketplace handles payments, freight, and financing – making buying and selling equipment easy.\n\nWe're starting with fire departments because of my personal background, but the same problem of selling used equipment exists in many other verticals including construction, agriculture, and government surplus equipment. \n\n**Meet the team**\n\nWe met while both studying at Columbia and have been friends for 6+ years. Before starting Garage, Alaz worked at Twitter and MemAI as a software engineer, and I worked as a private equity investor at Goldman Sachs.\n\n**Email us at **[**founders@withgarage.com**](mailto:founders@withgarage.com)**.**","slug":"KVx-garage-helping-fire-departments-buy-sell-equipment","created_at":"2024-02-28T19:03:55.748Z","updated_at":"2026-05-24T20:33:15.922Z","total_vote_count":265,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/KVx-garage-helping-fire-departments-buy-sell-equipment","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":29269,"name":"Garage","slug":"garage-2","url":"https://www.shopgarage.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/b097e3ed808fe533aff49062b2a59a6f1f2805fd.png","batch":"Winter 2024","industry":"B2B","tags":["Marketplace"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/29269"}}