S&S Fire Apparatus Company?

[Aaronw]

We used to have somebody on the site with some close knowledge of S&S.

The company shut down abruptly in late 2008 under a cloud of rumors. The last I heard their new parent company shut them down for not being profitable enough (not losing money, just not making enough profit). I was just wondering if after nearly 10 years any further info on their demise had been disclosed.

Also curious if there was a sort of successor to them as sometimes occurs when a company fails and a number of ex-employees join together to start a new business.

[Juice]

I live about 20 minutes from where S&S was located when they were operational. BrandFX body works out of Texas purchased them, and currently operates a bucket truck manufacturing facility out of their old site in Fairmount, Indiana. What little fire truck manufacturing they still dabble with takes place in Texas, and that's pretty much just brush and wildland type stuff. They made an appearance at FDIC a few years ago (around 2012 or so) and I spoke with one of their employees at that time, that made a very clear impression that they have no interest in venturing back in to the market that pretty much made S&S with stainless steel tankers, etc. There is a former S&S employee that bought out most of their parts and held on to some of their documents, and was operating a business selling replacement parts for customers, but I'm not sure if he's still doing that or not. Hope this sheds a little more light on it.

 

Trav!

[mayer22]

I think it's more than just a little dabbling. Most of the new USFS type 6 engines through the US come from BFX. And they make a pretty good product. Alot of changes have been made as far as functionality, but the looks are nearly the same. The USFS has dabbled in several different manufacturers, but BFX is still, for the most part on top. I inquired at the engine academy a few years ago (they send they're people to those events to teach us the in's and outs) as to wether they were going to expand the market for larger apparatus, and they had no interest. It was too big of a market since most manufacturers had already been there. BFX must be holding they're own somehow, they seem fairly content where they are at.

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[ACPD227]

I still need an Emblem from them. 

[Juice]

I still need an Emblem from them.

That makes 2 of us, I almost said that

[Aaronw]

Thanks, and nice to know that BFX is still building stuff.

I had wondered if the owner had bought S&S just to gut it since they only ran it for 2 or 3 years before shutting the company down. I wasn't aware BFX was building anything for the Feds. All of the new USFS Type 6s I've seen so far were KME, but the agency hasn't bought Type 6s in California since the mid 90s, so my exposure is limited.

I never worked on an S&S rig as the USFS in California only bought about a dozen or so Type 3 engines in 2005-2006, but the BLM bought a bunch of Type 4 and 6 engines as well as some big water tenders. They seemed to be quite happy with theirs.

[Juice]

I also find the information interesting, not knowing that BrandFX still had that much involvement in the government contracts, etc. I speculate at least 1 if not more S&S employees went to work for another local company called Warner Body. If you look at their tankers offerings, the designs seem to almost mirror that of S&S's.

 

Trav

[ACPD227]

Warner Body yep if I didn't know it was an s&s. Right down to the stainless under the body reflectors.

[Juice]

Warner Body yep if I didn't know it was an s&s. Right down to the stainless under the body reflectors.

 

That's actually exactly what I was referring to when I said that!