Quote:It will be interesting to see where this goes Kent, you're right. I've never thought of Smeal as a serious factor in fire apparatus, especially not here in Indiana. It's still crazy to me that they now own such a big name like LTI, and UST, and dare I say it could have gone to a better company, in my opinion? I'm curious to know where all of this money that they're spending just came from, out of nowhere.While Smeal tends to lack the name recognition of the more prominent manufacturers, they do build "bullet-proof" apparatus similar to the way that Pierce did in the 80's and 90's before they were acquired by Oshkosh. Interestingly enough, Pierce even bought their aerials from Smeal up into the 90's prior to coming up with their own design. As compared to some of the "big boys", Smeal also does not try to be everything to everyone, choosing rather to focus more on building a reasonably comprehensive line of products to maintain quality and acceptable delivery times. All that aside, Smeal has developed a number of their own apparatus innovations that deserve a close look by those in the market to purchase fire apparatus.
Trav!
I believe that as long as Smeal remains a stand-alone company they will continue to be a serious contender in the fire apparatus field because they control the quality versus shareholders who want the quantity. If more departments bought their apparatus based on fact and product quality versus brand loyalty and status, Smeal would likely have much more of the apparatus market share. It will be interesting over time to see how adding LTI and UST to the product line will affect Smeal's marketability overall.
As a disclaimer, I am not associated with Smeal or a local Smeal representative, but I do have considerable knowledge of their manufacturing capability and experience with their apparatus as an end user.
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