Built by a collectorwho refused to lose another car.
FloodVault was founded by Jim Jensen — entrepreneur, lifelong car enthusiast, and the founder and President of Metal Master, a Chicago-area steel distributor he started more than two decades ago with an order pad, a pen, and a telephone.
"Do what you say you are going to do."
Jim built Metal Master on a single promise, repeated to every customer: do what you say you are going to do. Two decades later that company is a full-service flat-rolled carbon steel distributor with a dozen employees, long-term supply contracts, just-in-time delivery, and stocking programs serving manufacturers across the Midwest.
Running a steel business teaches you two things very quickly: tolerances matter, and a supply chain is only as strong as the weakest seal in it. Both lessons are stamped into every FloodVault that leaves the line.
A Porsche guy, in a Porsche guy's garage.
Outside of steel, Jim's other life has always been the garage — and these days it is unmistakably a Porsche garage. Air-cooled and water-cooled, weekend drivers and track-day cars, the kind of vehicles whose value lives in their originality, their build sheets, and the miles still ahead of them. The photos on this site were shot inside his own collection.
Insurance can write a check. It can't write back the original sheet metal, the factory build sheet, or the years spent chasing the right car. After watching too many collector Porsches and other irreplaceable vehicles in Florida, Texas, and the Gulf get totaled by storm surge and flash flooding, Jim went looking for a real answer for his own garage. He didn't find one.
So he built it.
Steel-business discipline. Drysuit-grade engineering.
FloodVault is a full enclosure — top, sides, and a continuous sealed floor — built from marine-grade PVC and closed by a TIZIP® MasterSeal drysuit zipper. No straps. No pumps. No power. The weight of the vehicle holds the base in place; the zipper holds the water out.
Every vault is specified, sourced, and quality-checked with the same mindset Metal Master applies to a carbon steel coil heading to a stamping line. If it doesn't measure up, it doesn't ship.
Building and running Metal Master, a Chicago-area steel distributor.
Car collector and enthusiast — the original FloodVault customer.
Do what you say you are going to do. Same rule. New product.