Sales of fire trucks are, well, on fire

When you hear a piercing siren and a booming horn that sounds like a distressed 50,000-pound goose, chances are it’s a fire truck screaming toward an emergency in Greenville. And chances are that truck came through a small company on the edge of Spartanburg.

Spartan Fire and Emergency Apparatus has been selling first-responder vehicles since Bob Fore, a South Carolina native, started the company in 1973. Now, on the eve of the company’s 50th anniversary, the third generation has come to the fore.

“When I’m on an airplane,” says Robby Fore, the company’s president and founder’s son, ”the question comes up, ‘What do you do for a living?’ I guess I’ve never really asked people that question much because when I get asked, I’m kind of, ‘Oh, now, here we go. I sell fire trucks and ambulances.’”

Not your typical line of work. Then again, fire trucks aren’t your typical line of vehicles. Spartan Fire’s product comes from Pierce Manufacturing (locations in Florida and Wisconsin), which began in 1913 and has grown to become one of the nation’s largest fire-truck makers.

And every single one of those machines is custom-built.

“We must have hundreds of thousands of options. a car has a handful of options,” says Fore, sitting in his Reidville office with his daughter, Mary Elise Greenway, the company’s general manager.

Then, referring to the fire service area headquartered on Highway 11 in Landrum, he adds, “You think about New York, what they have to deal with to fight fires, compared to what Glassy Mountain does.”

Fore point out that specifications for a fire truck, the cost of which ranges from $750,000 to $2 million, stack up to as many as 125 pages.

“Buying a fire truck is more like purchasing a home or building a house from the ground up,” Greenway says.

Just as the equipment is so specialized, Spartan Fire’s salespeople, among the company’s 40 employees, are, too. The sales team accompanies fire department buyers through Pierce’s plants. (Fore’s son, R.E., serves as Spartan Fire’s sales administrator.)

“You take them through this manufacturing process, that’s hand-built. It’s amazing,” says Fore, describing the Wisconsin plant—as big as BMW’s nearby facility, he adds—and watching sheet-metal flats grow into 600 bespoke vehicles.

Greenville City Fire Chief Brian Horton has been buying from Spartan Fire for the last 10 years.

“Being that they’re out of Spartanburg, they’re local, it’s helpful having ties to the local community,” he says. “They’re very dependable, we get great service out of them. We have a great relationship with Spartan and Pierce.”

With seven fire stations and 17 pieces of firefighting equipment, the department has two new engines on order now, Horton says.

As it turns out, the fire-truck-sales business is, shall we say, on fire these days. The market jumped 40% from 2021 to 2022 last year, with delivery times now taking as long as three years, rather than the previous 18 months, Fore says.

Greenway calls the boom a “perfect storm,” with increases in municipal and federal revenues — some thanks to COVID-related funds and some from the state’s ever-growing population; Spartan Fire sells throughout South Carolina. In addition, Fore says, departments regularly add and replace trucks because no one can afford to have a vehicle out of service.

“It’s a life-saving piece of equipment,” Greenway says, “so it has to work and it has to save lives.”

More about Spartan Fire and Emergency Apparatus

Headquarters: Roebuck, South Carolina, with facilities in Summerville, South Carolina and Garner, North Carolina.
Founded: 1973
Sales and service: Dealership for fire, emergency and extrication equipment; provides certified technicians, service and parts managers, and mobile service vehicles.

Source: Spartan Fire and Emergency ApparatusThese vehicles are among GCFD’s total of 17 firefighting vehicles and other apparatus.

Source: Greenville City Fire Department (fire equipment)

Vehicle definitions:

Engine:
Fire engines and fire trucks are different. Engines: typically arrive at a scene before a fire truck does; fire trucks generally are used for victim rescue and containing a fire as it grows; engines, often called pumpers, include hoses, pumps and water tanks; trucks include aerial ladders.

Quint
A quint combines the capabilities of a ladder truck and the water-pumping ability of a fire engine — that is, the five main firefighting tools:

• Pump
• Water tank
• Fire hose
• Aerial device
• Ground ladders

Hazmat fire truck
These vehicles respond to hazardous-materials emergencies at, for instance, gas stations,  chemical plants and the like.

Sources: Pierce and FirefighterNOW