A Legacy of Spring Expertise

A Profile of FTR Associates/Foremost Spring

By Gary McCoy

The tie between FTR Associates and Foremost Spring in Santa Fe Springs, California, is linked by the legacy and friendship of two men and their families with many years of experience in the spring, wireforming and stamping industries.

Dennis Trepanier met Forrest Gardner when the two worked together at Western Spring in Downey, California. Both men eventually ventured off to start their own companies.

“We were work colleagues, but we were first and foremost friends,” said Trepanier. “I was pretty close to Forrest.”

Gardner was a machinist for a spring company in Connecticut before serving in the U.S. Army as a Signal Corps Lineman. He was honorably discharged in 1967 and started Foremost Spring a short time later.

Gardner started Foremost Spring in Downey in 1968 with a partner, while Trepanier started Tru-Form Tool and Die (now called Tru-Form Industries) out of his garage in the late ‘60s with his partner, Vern Hildebrandt, Sr.

Trepanier later sold his interest in the business to Hildebrandt and sat on the sidelines for nearly two years. He eventually got a call from Gardner, and Trepanier went to work at Foremost Spring as an employee for about six years in the company’s metal stamping and fourslide areas.

Sensing it was time to go back into business for himself, Trepanier started FTR Associates with two employees in Downey in 1991. The business grew quickly, and five years later he moved the company to Whittier, California, and operated from that location for the next six years. He moved FTR Associates to its present location in Santa Fe Springs, nearly 21 years ago.

At its heyday, Foremost Spring occupied more than 20,000 square feet in a facility in Downey with nearly 50 employees. After operating the company for more than four decades, Gardner retired to Maine to live on the family’s potato farm in Blaine. Christine Brown, who had been with the company 40 years, first as quality manager, then as vice president, continued to manage Foremost for the next several years until Gardner made the decision to sell.

“Forrest said he would make me a great deal and he didn’t want much for the business, he just wanted to make sure it kept going,” said Trepanier.

Regarding the sale, Debra Kolodge, Brown and Gardner’s daughter, said, “It was important to my father that the company not just get bought and pieced out. He wanted to ensure that all of his employees would remain with the company, and he knew that Dennis would take good care of them.”

Kolodge has worked for Trepanier since 1996, first as production control manager until 2008, and since then as FTR’s vice president.

Gardner died in Presque Isle, Maine, on May 14, 2015, but his legacy of hard work carries on.

Two Companies, One Mission

Knowing he couldn’t run Foremost Spring from Downey, shortly after buying the company Trepanier moved it into a building that became available next to FTR Associates. Now the two companies sit side-by-side in Santa Fe Springs, with only a parking lot and a sidewalk between them. Foremost Spring is operated separately, as a division of FTR Associates.

The space for Foremost at its current location is about half the size of its old building. “But we’ve been able to make it work,” Trepanier said.

“We have separation between FTR and Foremost Spring, but we essentially operate as one entity,” explained Kolodge.

Brown continued to manage Foremost Spring until her retirement five years ago, but Kolodge says her mother is still available for consultation on difficult spring designs and remembers minute details about most of the products the company continues to manufacture.

Kolodge worked a little bit at Foremost Spring during summers and school breaks before going to work for Trepanier.

Kolodge added the title of vice president at Foremost Spring five years ago, and Trepanier says she is the one who is responsible for the day-to-day operations there. “I really don’t get involved much with the business at Foremost,” said Trepanier. “Debra does a great job running it.”

“The guiding principles of Foremost Spring have always been quality, service and delivery,” explained Kolodge. “From design to delivery, Forrest took a very active role in all aspects of his company.” She would like to continue that tradition.

A Range of Products

Foremost Spring manufactures precision compression, extension, and torsion springs, power springs, Belleville springs, wave springs and curved springs, in addition to wireforms and metal stampings. They also offer heat setting and square under load capability, essential processes for many of the valve springs they manufacture.

FTR Associates manufacturers compression, extension and torsion springs, wireforms and metal stampings with an extensive punch press department in a range of 30-to-150-ton presses. FTR also has a large fourslide department with 23 machines, a full-service tool room, and is constantly updating their equipment with newer CNC coiling and wireforming technology.

“We have a lot of capabilities, and we try to do it all for our customers,” said Trepanier.

Between the companies, they serve a variety of industries including medical, dental, electronics, aerospace, lighting, displays, sporting goods, fasteners, building hardware, furniture, computers, R/C toys and cars, automotive aftermarket, firearms, and refrigeration.

Work done by Foremost Spring and FTR Associates in the scuba diving and skydiving industries grew out of hobbies between Gardner and Trepanier. Gardner was the scuba diver, while skydiving was Trepanier’s passion. Trepanier started jumping in 1967 and continued nearly every weekend for years, even participating in world record-setting jumps. He logged 3,280 jumps before completing his last about five years ago. Gardner also participated in skydiving occasionally with Trepanier.

The companies continue to make numerous springs for parachutes, including pull pins, and also manufacture items for the high-end scuba diving industry.

Trepanier has been a licensed pilot since 1971. Most days he makes the 75-mile trip to the company’s headquarters in Santa Fe Springs in his single engine Cessna 182 that seats four. He leaves from an airport near his home in Agua Dulce, California, flies to an airport in nearby Fullerton and then makes the short drive to Santa Fe Springs. If he’s not able to fly due to the weather, the drive for Trepanier in brutal Southern California traffic can sometimes take more than two hours.

For longer trips, Trepanier also owns a twin-engine Cessna 337G Skymaster. The plane seats six and is known for its unique push-pull configuration between the two engines.

Trepanier has more than 50 years of experience in the industry. As the company says on its website about Trepanier, “His expertise, hard work, and dedication to customer satisfaction has helped FTR to enjoy steady growth and a solid reputation for quality, precision products.”

Serving the Industry

With a career in the spring industry spanning more than three decades, Kolodge says, “I love how the individual companies within our industry are so friendly and supportive of one another.”

Trepanier describes Kolodge as one of a kind. “She is fantastic at whatever she does. She is so smart and does a great job managing people. And she can run any part of our business.”

Like others in the industry, Kolodge is sad to see that parents are no longer passing the knowledge of their trade on to their children. “I think the knowledge and skill required to tool and operate a fourslide machine, set up a CNC wireforming machine, or operate a coiler are dying out.”

She worries that the spring industry hasn’t been proactive enough to prevent this labor shortage. “We’re at the point where if you want to hire somebody that operates a fourslide, it is difficult to avoid stealing somebody from another company,” she explained.

In 2012, Kolodge and Colleen Trost, president of Vaga Industries, joined the board of the West Coast Spring Manufacturers Association (WCSMA), becoming the first two women to serve in that role. Trost went on to become the first female president of WCSMA and Kolodge later followed in her footsteps, serving as president from 2016-2017.

Kolodge continues to serve as a board member and believes the association serves an important purpose that contributes to the industry. She adds, “I love that SMI supports the WCSMA, and our company has greatly benefited from the spring design classes and other educational opportunities they offer.”

All in the Family

Trepanier lives on a 5-acre ranch in Agua Dulce with his wife, Serena, who owns three horses. His daughter, Brianna, also lives there and has three horses. Brianna is a nationally known professional barrel racer. They also board several horses at the ranch and have a menagerie of animals including a 600-pound pig and several chickens. “It’s really beautiful there,” he said.

Trepanier’s daughter, Lisa, works at FTR in inside sales and quoting. She’s also very active in WCSMA activities. Trepanier’s son, David, previously worked at FTR but pursued his passion as a chef and now works locally in Long Beach operating Crack, a restaurant with a strong cult following. Trepanier’s youngest daughter, Demi, studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kolodge lives with her husband Scott, an electrician for the city of Newport Beach, and has two grown children.

Her daughter, Kara, 33, lives in Oregon serving the shipping industry at the Willamette River port. Her son, Patrick, 26, works in security after serving in the Marine Corps.

When she’s not working, Kolodge enjoys reading, spending time with family and friends, and traveling to breweries and wineries with Scott. Kolodge is still very close to her mom, Chris Brown, who lives nearby.

Between the two families there is a lot of love and respect and a legacy of spring expertise. n

Starrett offers a complete line of innovative force solutions for spring testing. High volume production testing solutions are available with both basic (L1) and advanced (L2) software.