Photo by 3iii Studio (Massi)
Alberta Wilbert Sales Enjoys Half-Century Legacy BY RENNAY CRAATS
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acres of land at 170 Street and 129 Avenue in Edmonton in 1970, giving him the space to engineer round holding tanks and water cisterns through the mid-1970s. As the company grew, the site expanded to accommodate that growth.
“I thought I had to find something else that was going to work better than this, so having made septic tanks and burial vaults in the States, I decided to do that here,” says Leonard Traub, founder and owner of AWS.
Today, the Edmonton facility sits on 12.5 acres and houses two plants and the head office that sprawls over 90,000 square feet. The company has expanded to include a tank location in Penhold, a burial vault satellite in Winnipeg, and an office, tank yard and burial operation in Calgary, as well as distributors in Lethbridge and Grande Prairie. The one-man operation now employs about 70 people and is one of the largest independent concrete precasters in the Prairies and the largest Canadian territory in the Wilbert franchise network. Traub is the only founder in the Wilbert organization still active today.
hen Alberta Wilbert Sales (AWS) started out in 1967, it was a one-man operation dealing in funeral vaults for northern Alberta. During that first year, sales were only $35,000 and the company lost money. Thankfully, the one man in the operation was Leonard Traub. He quickly recognized some changes were needed in order to make his vision a success.
Traub added tanks to his catalogue and continued to grow and add more and larger products over the years. He bought five
BACK ROW LEFT TO RIGHT: LEONARD TRAUB, DAVID DALLAIRE, BOB DEMCO MIDDLE ROW LEFT TO RIGHT: KENDRA BARTON, STEVE IERULLO, PETER IERULLO JR, PETE IERULLO, PAULA IERULLO FRONT ROW LEFT TO RIGHT: JONNY HOEFNAGELS, TIM IERULLO, MIKE DEPATIE
ALBERTA WILBERT SALES | 50 YEARS
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