Who’s behind the tools at HURST Jaws of Life? It’s people like Bradley Stevens, a man who has a passion for racing cars and motorcycles and whose job helps ensure first responders can get people out of them.

“I’ve been in and around cars in every way you can imagine – driving them, fixing them, racing them,” Bradley said. Unfortunately, he added, racing sometimes means wrecking. “You fix one thing, then it’s another. And racing doesn’t pay the bills when you’re hurt.”

Years ago, he was injured in a motorcycle crash at Road Atlanta and as a result couldn’t work, so, he re-set his excitement meter and traded in his race bike for a dirt bike. This is fine with him, as he can mesh his passion for speed with his job at HURST; he’s just looking at it from a different perspective.

Bradley is the maintenance supervisor at HURST, keeping a close eye on all the goings on at the Shelby, N.C., manufacturing plant where a team of extraordinary workers make the HURST Jaws of Life rescue tools that first responders rely on to get patients out of cars after an accident. A former heavy equipment operator, Bradley first joined HURST’s assembly team.

“I’ve been trying to learn a little bit about everything to help everyone and anyone that I can,” he said. His curiosity, ability to get things done and heavy equipment background earned him a promotion to maintenance supervisor; an average day keeps him on his toes…and on his forklift.

“There’s no such thing as a monotonous day around here,” said Bradley of HURST, which this month launched the industry’s first-ever battery-powered, watertight extrication tool line. “It’s a great atmosphere. It’s a great place to be.”

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