- City
- Colorado Springs
- State
- CO
New Fire Truck
- Thread starter Polarfire
- Start date
- City
- Columbia
- State
- MO
After having visited the Sutphen factory and talking with many employees (many 20+ years and one that is 4th generation and not related to the owners) as well as having dinner with Drew Sutphen, the current president of the company, I'd say, as far as this company goes, that statement is not correct. With the fire apparatus manufacturing industry down over 17% over the last several years, Sutphen had their best sales year on record in 2016. They are by no means the biggest manufacture but they are one of a very small group that are family owned and have a long history in the industry. Just one example that stood out to me is when the president of the company was talking to me about the fire engine we were ordering, he handed his card to me with his personal cell number on it and said he wanted me to call him directly six months after we take delivery of the truck and let him know my opinion on it and if there was anything that needed improvement. I'm not a chief or even an officer and I have no control over budgets or capital expenditures but he knows I'm the guy who will be driving/pumping/and taking care of this truck and ultimately I'm the best person to assess the truck in a real world environment. That says something, to me at least. I've been to other fire apparatus manufactures (one of the largest being Pierce were the department I was on at the time was ordering 18 apparatus at one time) and I've never even met the president of the company let alone talked to him about everything from Jeeps (he owned a '65 CJ5) to skiing to football and had him give me his number to call. I'm not blind to the fact this may all be part of a sales pitch but, as a small business owner myself, I understand the ultimate importance of excellent customer service and that is what we, as a department, receive from them. I don't think we will be switching anytime soon and I'm good with that.
Last edited:
- City
- Columbia
- State
- MO
^^^This is exactly why^^^
Belizeit
CJ-8 Member
- City
- River Ridge
- State
- La
We have a couple of Ferrara Brand fire trucks at work. Family owned also. They are manufactured just up the road
- City
- Colorado Springs
- State
- CO
7jeeps7kings
Legacy Registered User
- City
- right near the lake
- State
- OH
Not Trolling here. Im glad you had a great experience with the owner. family owned businesses are always nice. At the end of the day they are a business. Been apart of spec or two, made a trip or two with paid (on their dime. or you can also consider that on the municipalities/ organizations dime since a lot (all) of that is built into the price of the truck): flights, hotel stay, entertainment, dinners, drinks, and rubbing elbows with some the smoothest talkers. lots of smoke and mirrors out there.
my original post was just passing on some friendly advise with Sutphen. And your right every company that manufactures anything has a lemon or two out there. it just sucks when you're the one holding the lemon and they are playing dumb.
That was a real story I was hinting around at in my first post. last years model motor that did not make it onto a frame/chassis with a vin when 2007.5 hit. These manufactures buy motors, trans, and parts in bulk to save on cost. some times that bits them in the butt and the parts manufactures try to help them get through stuff like emission or safety standards otherwise the parts can only be used on vehicles that are grandfathered before the standard. thats why a lot of places are re-chassising (or considering it) their old trucks; especially to get around the emissions stuff. (on a side note they should have exempted the fire services as they did the military because the emissions equipment is not meant to go through the beating that the fire service puts on them. on/off, on off, 100mph or due regard then sudden stops, pumping the stuff out of them...)So they had to make a "family choices" keep it on the shelf and sell it as parts when someone blows a motor because it was a pre-emission motor, or call up cummins and see how they could retro fit the non-emission motors on the shelf to meet the new emission standards (which it was not designed for) and send it down the road to the mindless department/city/organization/municipality that had no ideal. bad turbo after bad turbo (and I'm talking about 20 + turbo's per vehicle. no joke), ecm programming after emc programming/ replacement, a truck that is in constantly in auto-gen or Regen (no matter how long you let the truck sit out, or how hard you run it down the interstate to clean it out) still to this day. once the warranty was up and with a know problem and some investigation work with cummins... a "Family" owned business made a choice... cummins said that series motor never came with emissions. ran every serial number on the block. every cummins mechanic that showed up said the samething: "this motor was not designed to to run this setup." now I'm not naive sutphen did not hillbilly rig these motors on their own... cummins plays a part in it also. maybe not the local cummins services/ dealer... but someone did.
so again just passing on friendly advise... thats all
- City
- Columbia
- State
- MO
I understand what you're saying but I'd have to lay a lot of that blame on the fire department as well. Perhaps the person(s) specking the truck were not the most informed. In the pre-build meeting we spent almost 7 hours going over EVERY line on the build. There is literally not one item we didn't mention and many we discussed at length. We have bought several diesel engines that were pre-new emissions standard and had chassis assigned to them but were built at a later date. Those trucks are in-service now and work fine. However, they were never equipped with emissions components that they were not designed for. The client has the final say in what is built and signs off on it. We've had a few crap trucks (mostly built by several manufactures which all blame the others work as the problem and never fix it) but in the end, it was ultimately our fault for ever building it that way. Everyone has their favorite manufacture, no different then Chevy/Ford/Dodge fans.
7jeeps7kings
Legacy Registered User
- City
- right near the lake
- State
- OH
I'd hate to be under your judge and jury... LOL. But for conversation sake I'll take the blame (I'm not very smart obviously I have two strikes: fireman, and jeep owner). This is not a ford vs chevy type debate; thats not what my post is about. I'd buy or be apart of any fire truck company that is willing to build a quality truck (and I have). I've worked off of and in a lot of the big names out there. And that does not make me a pro by no stretch... not trying to debate my knowledge or yours but also this is not my first rodeo either. A person would really have to have their boots on tight to know all the variations of cummins (which there is a ton of configurations out there. cummins are in almost everything) and which one would or wouldn't except or was or was not designed for an emission system. The local cummins service company couldn't figure it out (at first; took a couple of trips and investigating). And I bet if you talk to your salesmen on your current truck he would have a hard time telling you what series motor and what series emissions you have and how they can or can't be interchanged. They would say we get everything from cummins so it must be right. But it is 2017; 10 years later. Other then being dumb, and getting a motor that someone altered, it was the first year for the setup (lucky us).
I would like to think the client has the final say but we were too dumb to notice it before signing the dotted line. everything worked at the factory. nothing looked wrong. and everything matched the spec. The warranty period was nothing but repairs as mentioned all the way till the end of it. With Suthpen pointing fingers at cummins and cummins pointing fingers at Suthpen. In the end a city lost. I've point my finger at Suthpen... but maybe after all these years I should start looking in the mirror.
Good luck. and again was not trying to hi-jack your thread. the sticker looks good.
7jeeps7kings, Drew
- City
- Lancaster
- State
- Oh
Polarfire, I think you'll like your Sutphen. I live about forty miles from their factory in Columbus. The department I was on always had Sutphens. The engine I started on was actually the last open-rear cab they built. The front three seats were enclosed, but the two rear facing seats were covered but open. One guy on either side of the doghouse. It was a walk-through central control panel set-up. It made it nice because you could see off of either side while running the pump. You were never parked on the wrong side of the fire. I miss that old truck. It was also our second automatic. The truck that it replaced was a five speed. Most of the volunteers could drive it, but the guys that worked part-time that had full-time fire jobs wanted nothing to do with it! The volunteers had driven it since it was new. We replaced our 63 International Grass truck with a new 96 F-350. That little International went EVERYWHERE! We had a big grassfire back in a field a long way off of the road on day. We went down the access path and found a mutual aid departments Chevy grasstruck buried to the axles. We went around them, put the fire out, the. Came back and pulled them out.
They weren't real happy...
They weren't real happy...