When the fire department in Duxbury, Massachusetts, sold a nearly 40-year-old fire truck through Garage, it recovered almost $40,000. Chief Rob Reardon says the vehicle might otherwise have fetched little more than scrap value.
The proceeds went toward future apparatus purchases, a meaningful return for a department managing the substantial cost of replacing its equipment.
“Garage made the process simple and helped us recover real value that we would not have seen otherwise,” Reardon said.
That gap between what specialized equipment can command locally and what a buyer elsewhere will pay is the opportunity behind Garage, a New York startup bringing municipal vehicle sales online.
The company today announced $41 million in Series B funding led by Invus Opportunities, with participation from Infinity Ventures, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Benchstrength and FJ Labs. The round brings Garage’s total funding to $60 million and will support hiring and expansion across heavy-duty equipment categories, including public works and sanitation.
Garage says it has crossed $100 million in annual platform sales and is growing more than 400% year over year. The sales figure represents the value of equipment traded through its marketplace.
For cofounder and CEO Martin Hunt, the business grew out of a problem he understood firsthand.
Hunt served as a firefighter and EMT before attending Columbia University and working at Goldman Sachs. In late 2023, a call from a fellow firefighter looking for a better way to procure equipment prompted him to leave Wall Street. He teamed up with software developer Alaz Sengul, now Garage’s chief technology officer, to build a marketplace for an industry still dependent on manual processes and local relationships.
The underlying problem is straightforward: A community selling a used fire engine needs to find a buyer with the right budget, equipment requirements and ability to transport it. That buyer may be hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Garage says the average transaction on its platform moves equipment more than 1,400 miles. Its customers span more than 1,000 communities across all 50 states and Canada.
Connecting those buyers and sellers requires more than publishing listings. Specialized vehicles can be difficult to price, expensive to move and complicated to finance, particularly when the buyer operates under municipal purchasing requirements.
Garage’s platform combines AI-assisted appraisals with freight quoting, transportation coordination, equipment warranties and financing designed around those requirements. Its pricing tools aim to give buyers and sellers a clearer view of an asset’s value, while its transaction services address the practical obstacles to completing a sale across state lines.
For investors, the appeal includes how much of that work the company says it can automate.
“Reaching $100 million in annual sales with zero logistics employees is a testament to the power of their AI-driven platform,” said Bryan Kim, a partner at Invus Opportunities.
Garage describes the broader secondary market for heavy-duty equipment as a $1 trillion opportunity. Its initial traction, however, rests on a more immediate municipal concern: stretching limited budgets as replacement vehicles become increasingly expensive.
According to Garage, a new fire truck can cost as much as $2 million, while used trucks on its marketplace can be available for approximately $150,000. Prices depend on age, condition and specifications, but the difference illustrates why departments consider pre-owned equipment.
Selling surplus vehicles can also release money for other priorities.
In Auburn, Massachusetts, Garage says a department that had never sold a truck for more than $10,000 through traditional channels sold one through the platform for $120,000. The proceeds helped fund rescue equipment.
In Skagit County, Washington, Fire District #8 sold four vehicles in less than a month, recovering more than $270,000, roughly three times what it expected, according to Garage.
The company estimates that higher resale proceeds and lower equipment acquisition costs have together delivered more than $100 million in financial benefits to municipalities.
“An extra million dollars has a real impact on a community,” Hunt said. “Those funds can be reinvested in schools, roads, and local employees without increasing the burden on taxpayers.”
Garage’s next challenge is extending its traction in fire apparatus across a wider range of equipment. Garbage trucks and public works vehicles share many of the same transaction hurdles: specialized buyers, substantial purchase prices and complicated transportation.
The new funding gives Garage resources to pursue those categories. Its case for expansion rests on whether the process it has built for fire departments can produce similar results elsewhere in municipal procurement.
As Hunt puts it, “First it was fire trucks, then it was sanitation vehicles, but the underlying problem exists across any asset that is expensive, specialized, and hard-to-move.”
