Garage Raises $41M Series B to Digitize Fire Truck and Municipal Equipment Sales

Garage has raised a $41M Series B to expand its AI-powered marketplace for fire trucks, garbage trucks, and other heavy-duty municipal equipment, bringing the startup's total funding to $60M. Invus Opportunities led the round, with participation from Infinity Ventures, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Benchstrength, eBay Ventures, and FJ Labs.

The round lands on real traction. The platform has crossed $100M in annualized sales and now serves more than 1,000 communities across all 50 states. The average transaction travels more than 1,400 miles — a number that captures exactly what Garage is selling: distance. A small town in one state can now sell a retired fire engine to a budget-strapped department three states away, instead of watching it go to a thin local auction.

What does Garage actually fix?

Local governments own some of the most expensive, specialized assets in the public sector, yet the resale market for them never left the era of paper and phone calls. When a town retires a truck, it usually turns to a regional auction where a shallow pool of nearby bidders pushes the price toward scrap value. Buyers on tight budgets, meanwhile, can't see inventory beyond their own region.

CEO and cofounder Martin Hunt summed up the dynamic bluntly: municipalities historically sold assets for scrap value at local auctions while buyers faced limited selection due to geographic constraints. Garage's answer bundles several pieces into one platform:

• An AI appraisal tool that sets data-driven valuations
• Instant freight quoting and automated logistics that move 80,000-pound vehicles across state lines
• Vehicle warranties and custom financing built around municipal budgets and procurement compliance rules

Garage takes a fee on sales transacted on the platform.

A founder who came up through the firehouse

Hunt's path to the business is unusually direct. He worked as a firefighter and EMT before moving to Wall Street after college. In 2023, a call from a fellow firefighter — frustrated by how hard it was to buy and sell used equipment — prompted him to leave his job. He teamed up with CTO Alaz Sengul to launch Garage, starting with fire departments before broadening to municipalities and essential service businesses. The two cofounders first met while studying at Columbia University.

The numbers behind the check

Garage estimates it has saved municipalities over $100M to date. The savings come from two directions: sellers capture higher surplus recovery values, and buyers acquire quality used fleets at a fraction of the cost of new equipment. That math sits inside what the company sizes as a $1T secondary market for heavy-duty assets — fragmented, offline, and largely ignored by modern software.

Hunt framed the investor pitch in expansive terms. "We aren't just building software; we are fundamentally rewiring how local governments and private operators across the country procure the equipment that keeps our communities running," he said. He also noted the round was as much about partners as capital: the team was intentional about "bringing the right people around the table who understand what we're building."

What does this change for the sector?

The new capital funds team growth and a push into new heavy-duty verticals: public works and sanitation, where the same procurement bottlenecks exist. Hunt says the near-term goal is applying the fire-truck playbook to "any asset that is expensive, specialized, and hard to move," so every community can maintain essential services without bankrupting the town. For auction houses and regional equipment dealers, that means a well-funded national competitor just widened its scope — and for finance directors in small municipalities, an alternative to settling for scrap value just got easier to find.