with
Brian Dickson PRESIDENT, BD LOOPS
Brian Dickson and his father, Ted, started BD Loops in 2001 in his father’s garage. Interestingly, Brian is the “BD” in BD Loops. In 2013, Brian and his wife, Shawna, took over the operations of the company. BD Loops won the Stanton Manufacturer of the Year award in 2017 and Brian became president of the company in 2018. Read on to find out how BD Loops went from operating out of a garage to a 12,000 square foot building with over 600 distributors. HOW DID THE COMPANY GET STARTED? My father, Ted, and I started the company together in 2001. My father was managing an access control division at a wrought iron company and a lot of their repeat service calls on brand new gate installations were because of faulty loops. He had a background in broadcast engineering and decided to build a better loop to save the company all the lost revenue from repeat service calls. I set the company up and manufactured the loops in his garage. Soon, we had a garage full of loops and started selling our preformed loops to distributors in our industry. My wife, Shawna, and I took over the operations in 2013 and I became the president in 2018 when we bought my father’s shares of the company so he could focus more on his health and retire. Unfortunately, my
father passed away in 2019 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He had a difficult time staying still, he always had new ideas and projects he wanted to work on. He would call us all the time with ideas he had for workstation and building improvements. FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW WHAT A LOOP IS, CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT? An “inductance loop” is a vehicle detection device installed in the roadway designed to detect moving metal, such as a car. In the gate industry, loops are often installed to automatically open and/or prevent closure of the gate on a vehicle. Inductance loops are used in a variety of ways and many industries ranging from detecting vehicles at traffic signals, drive thru lanes, car counting in parking lots, and even your morning freeway traffic reports are all done with loops. IN THE BEGINNING, YOU HAD TO QUELL THE MYTH THAT AN UNTWISTED LOOP LEAD-IN WOULD CAUSE PROBLEMS. DESCRIBE THAT SITUATION AND HOW YOU OVERCAME IT. Untwisted loops lead-ins isn’t the only loop myth we’ve worked on dispelling. There is a lot of misinformation about inductance
Brian, Ted and Shawna Dickson
9
SEPTEMBER 2021 | FENCE NEWS USA
loops and how they operate floating about. Anyone who has been in the industry long enough has probably heard quite a few of these myths: loops are pressure/weight sensors, loops only detect magnetic objects, varying guidelines on how far loops need to be placed from electrical lines, etc. We’ve found the best way to overcome misinformation is to provide quality educational content to the industry. We have an abundance of articles and test results about inductance loops on our website: www.BDLoops.com, and we teach classes about loops at various industry events. We’ve also worked with industry associations and manufacturers to help review and provide educational content on inductance loops for training courses. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF YOUR LOOPS? BD Loops are preformed, saving installers time during installation, require less materials (sealant & backer rod) for installation, and offer better protection with a thick outer jacket. Each loop is tested before being packaged so you know a BD Loop is good right out of the bag. Standard and custom sized loops also ship the same day. BD Loops has designed not just a superior loop product, but an entire loop installation system. For example, with our preformed Saw-
