“From small beginnings come great things.”

Trique Manufacturing is only 1 year old. We have a fairly humble beginning. The company was founded by Terry Altman.
Terry owned Altman's Body Shop in Russellville, AR for over 15 years. After Terry designed the first Altman Easy Latch Kit (1953-56 Ford F-100 Kit) he decided to sell the body shop and begin designing other Easy Latch kits as well as other parts for hot rods, street rods, custom cars, and trucks. An avid hot rodder himself, Altman knows what it takes to build a project from the ground up. He has built two show winning magazine covered Ford F-100s.

Terry had ideas for door handles, door pulls, interior lights, interior parts, exterior parts, and of course, more latch kits. All of the ideas had to become reality. His first approach was to contract the ideas out to a machine shop and have the pieces made. It became evident rather quickly that Terry was going to need to move product development in house. Altman invested in a CNC milling machine and CAD software to draw and program the ideas he had in his head. He then converted his barn at home into a modest garage/machine shop. At this time he only had one part that was being machined. It was a billet aluminum striker block for his 53-56 F-1oo Easy Latch Kit. The company that helped him with manufacturing the piece also helped him set his machine up at home to cut it himself. After the program was loaded into the machine and Terry was shown how to start and stop the program and he began making striker blocks as he needed them to fill orders for his F-100 latch kit.

As time went on Altman wanted to expand and start making some of the pieces that he had been thinking about for so long. Terry's biggest hurdle was the fact that he was not familiar with computers and new even less about the CNC machine. He enlisted the help of Chris Turner (me). I was an employee of Altman's at the body shop he had once owned. Knowing that I was fairly computer literate and had a desire to learn, Altman gave me the CAD software along with a challenge of sorts. The challenge was to produce a 3D drawing of a door handle design that Terry had come up with. Within a month I had done just that. At this time I had never used CAD software, never seen a CNC machine other than on T.V. shows like O.C.C. So I sat down in the evenings after work in front of my home computer and taught myself how to draw 2D and 3D images with the CAD software. In retrospect Terry and I have both talked about the fact that the whole thing was a pretty big crap shoot. Not too long after that, I left the body shop and came to work for Terry full time out of his home garage. The next several months were spent learning how to turn drawings into reality. A whole lot of scrap material later and we started seeing some pretty cool products start taking shape.

While Terry continued to design Easy Latch Kits he also worked with me to design our line of interior pieces. We tried so many different things. Some we kept, some we trashed, some we look back and laugh at. One year has passed since we started and now we have a fairly strong product line. Our latch kits have grown to four current models with several more in the works as I write this. We have moved to a 7000 sq ft building, invested in a few more machines, and created our website. We have our sights set so much higher than where we are right now, but you have to crawl before you can walk. We are very proud of what we have accomplished thus far and have no doubt that if we stay the course we will get to where we want to be.

I think I can speak for both of us when I say we have learned so much over the past year and each day brings about a new challenge. Keep checking back with us and watch us grow. We will keep doing what we can do to bring truth to the quote "from small beginnings come great things."