FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Super Vacuum Manufacturing Founder Erv Weinmeister passed away in the early morning hours on Dec. 27, 2024 at UC Health Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colo. Erv Weinmeister was an inventor and well-loved entrepreneur, who devoted 24 years as a firefighter and seven decades to fire equipment manufacturing. Many in the industry called him “a visionary who pushed the fire industry forward.”
Weinmeister began working for his two-genera on-old family business, the Super Vacuum Propeller Company. In 1954, the Super Vacuum Manufacturing Company was incorporated in Colorado, focusing on essential fire ventilation equipment. Not long after, Weinmeister invented the first gas-powered fan, and by the 1970s, he set out to be one of the first small manufacturers to export fire equipment. Years later, local publications hailed Super Vac as “the Cadillac in the firefighting business.”
Throughout those years, Weinmeister dedicated 24 years to the Loveland Volunteer Fire Department. He served as fire chief during the Big Thompson Flood of 1976, leading the tiresome recovery effort. During that same firefighting tenure, Loveland needed a fire truck, so the department turned to Super Vac’s fabricating capabilities. In 1971, the company built its first-ever fire truck. Today, Super Vac’s fire truck division is now known as SVI Trucks.
In 1972, Weinmeister invented the first-ever light tower when he recognized the need for better scene lighting after his Loveland crew struggled to light a steep incline during a canyon incident. Soon after, the Command Light division was born. Seventy years later after Super Vacuum’s incorporation, the company employs more than 200 men and women across nine different divisions, now owned and operated by Weinmeister’s children, Roger, Ron, Tammy and son-in-law Bob Sorensen.
All four children, along with their own children, will tell you that Weinmeister instilled an ever important work ethic in each of them. Each one scrubbed toilets, mowed lawns and swept the loading dock at Super Vac. And at Weinmeister’s beloved ranches, Twin Eagle and Grace Creek, there were just as many chores, working a 60-head herd of beefalo. In the end, if a job wasn’t done right, Weinmeister would be sure to demonstrate. When he wasn’t working or ranching, he was fishing, hunting, driving or dancing around the cabin’s wooden porch — always in a pair of cowboy boots.
In the end, Weinmeister never stopped working. He drove to work, walked the floors, put in his office time, then made the lunch hour bell before leaving for the day to start it all over again — up un l the very end. “That’s what he instilled in all of us,” his family said. “To work hard for something good. That’s the legacy Erv left us.”
Erv Weinmeister’s Celebration of Life will be held 11 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025 at Foundations Church, 1380 N. Denver Ave. in Loveland, Colo. In good ol’ Erv fashion, boots and jean attire are requested. In lieu of flowers, the Weinmeister family asks that donations be made to the Ronald McDonald House Charities at rmhc.org/donate at rmhc.org/donate. A live stream of the service will be available at live.foundationschurch.org.
