Mishap leads to invention.(Jean-Yves Godin)(Brief Article)

Contractor Jean-Yves Godin had not planned to become an inventor. It happened quite unexpectedly. He was reversing a lawn tractor out of a pickup truck when the machine dislodged the two planks he had been using as a ramp. The tractor toppled, tossing him upside down. Godin hit the ground, hard and painfully, he recalls.

"I fell backwards (off the tractor) and for three months could hardly walk," Godin says. "I said, 'there's got to be a better way to load a machine.'"

Godin, owner of Godin Enterprises, invented that better way - a patented, folding ramp, ca