Our History

Backstop was developed by a gentleman engineer who witnessed a person being run over by a truck backing up at a cross street in England. It bothered him so much that he returned home and started to work on a system to try and solve the backing up problem. He had it fully developed by 1980 and after two full years of extensive field testing, it was introduced in the U.K. in 1983 as Croft Backstop.

Backstop became available early in 1986, on the US market after some modifications, testing and approvals. Universal Fire Equipment became involved after the company invited us for a demonstration. We were so impressed by the safety features such as saving lives and avoiding damage to property that we signed up for exclusive sales in New Jersey. That escalated to licensing in the additional states of New York and Pennsylvania.

Due to the extreme costs and incoming freight from the U.K. and problems with deliveries from the U.K. the entire operation was turned over to Universal Life Safety Products LLC. The Backstop systems are now completely manufactured and tested in the USA and at a much lower cost. The name was changed to Backstop-USA and we now are happy to we have sales around the world.