Garage Raises $13.5M to Modernize Firetruck Marketplace

Firefighter-founded startup Garage builds an AI marketplace for public-safety gear

When Martin Hunt — who’d fought fires since he was 15 — kept hearing the same problem from departments, he did something familiar to entrepreneurs: he fixed it. In 2023 Hunt left his job, teamed with college friend Alaz Sengul, and built Garage, a nationwide marketplace to buy and sell heavy, mission-critical public equipment such as firetrucks.

Small towns and understaffed fleets traditionally rely on GovDeals, Facebook groups, or classifieds to trade used apparatus. That works — until buyers are thousands of miles away, paperwork piles up, and logistics or fraud risks make cross-state transactions impractical. Hunt saw a clear gap: expensive, hard-to-move assets needed a streamlined, secure marketplace.

Garage stitches automation into the process. Sellers use an AI-driven appraisal tool, listings offer auction or buy-now formats, and buyers can request instant quotes for warranty and freight. Once both sides agree, Garage handles backend payments and uses AI-assisted coordination to help arrange delivery and reduce friction.

That automation targets the real pain points for public servants.

• AI appraisals reduce guesswork and speed listings.
• Instant freight and warranty quotes eliminate back-and-forth.
• Integrated payments and delivery coordination close deals securely.
• Fraud protections address risks common on consumer platforms.

Investors took notice. After YC’s Winter ’24 cohort and a $4.5M seed led by Initialized Capital, Garage announced a $13.5M Series A led by Infinity Ventures, bringing total funding to about $18M. Benchstrength, Wayfinder Ventures, and FJ Labs also participated.

Garage says the product is already used across all 50 states, with customers ranging from Burlington, Vermont to South Charleston, West Virginia. The business case is simple: when departments can sell an old truck quickly and buy a needed piece of equipment without juggling logistics or paperwork, scarce municipal dollars go further and frontline readiness improves.

There are broader implications here. Marketplaces that solve for shipping, escrow and verification unlock nationwide liquidity for bulky assets. That not only raises resale prices for selling municipalities but also gives smaller buyers access to equipment previously out of reach. The same pattern could apply to ambulances, snowplows, and other specialized fleet assets.

Challenges remain: logistics can be expensive, regulations vary by state, and trust barriers persist when transactions exceed $100,000. Garage’s mix of automation and human coordination is an answer, but scaling will require deeper carrier partnerships, transparent inspection histories, and ongoing fraud detection.

From QuarkyByte’s perspective, this is a textbook case of technology unlocking public-sector efficiency: apply AI to standardize valuations, bake in logistics and escrow to reduce transaction risk, and measure impact in saved procurement dollars and improved response capability. For city leaders and fleet managers, the opportunity is to treat procurement as an operational lever, not just a checkbox.

If your organization is evaluating marketplace providers, consider pilots that track total cost of ownership, time-to-deployment, and incident-readiness gains. With targeted analytics and operational playbooks, municipalities can convert used assets into capital and keep funds focused where they matter most: on the communities they serve.