Fire Departments' New Emergency: Affording Their Trucks

Three companies have come to dominate the fire apparatus industry, putting the screws to our towns and cities.

Illustration by Daniel Medina

When I was a kid, one of the coolest things was that every year, a few days before Christmas, our town’s fire department would drive through all the neighborhoods in its gleaming fire engine with the lights flashing, giving short bursts of the siren. All the firemen were in full gear hanging off the sides, while Santa, sitting at the top, threw candy canes to us all. The fire department was special, especially to the kids whose dads or uncles were volunteers.

These days, that truck may not be as shiny as it once was, as there are many trucks in service that should have been retired or kept only as backups because of how prone to failure they are. That’s what happened in Camden, NJ, in March 2024. From NJ.com:

Camden Fire Capt. Will Johnson and his crew arrived within five minutes in Engine 8, a battle-scarred, 21-year-old truck. Flames roared from the second-floor windows as firefighters rushed in, spraying water to try to save Shawn, 35.

But then the hose went limp. The red-and-white truck’s pump had failed, according to incident reports. About two and a half minutes passed, Johnson estimates, before water was restored.

Shawn did not make it. The captain wrote in a report that “we could not advance quickly enough to suppress a bulk of the fire or have an adequate primary search done to locate the victim.”

We don’t know if Shawn would have lived if the pumper truck had worked. But a 21-year-old pumper truck should not be on the front lines of service. The National Fire Protection Association recommends that trucks older than 15 years be relegated to a station’s reserve fleet and completely removed after 25 years.

Los Angeles is a prime example of an aging fleet. The Los Angeles Times reports that as of last June, 60% of its 210 pumper trucks and 48% of its ladder trucks were operating beyond their recommended lifespans. During the Palisades fire, roughly 40 pumper trucks were in the shop; 70 percent of them were 15 years or older, including three built in I999.

“These aging and inoperable fire trucks have certainly harmed emergency responses and cost lives,” Edward Kelly, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters union, said during a U.S. Senate hearing in September.

He cited an incident in Chicago last summer when a ladder on a reserve truck failed during a rescue. Firefighters had to restart the truck to raise the ladder. Four people died, including a five-year-old.

What the hell is going on?

Lack of competition, for one. Three manufacturers have emerged in the last two decades to control 70% to 80% of the market, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the town of Newstead, NY.

One of the companies, REV Group, was created by a private equity firm, American Industrial Partners (AIP). It got into the fire apparatus business in 2008 with the purchase of E-One, a huge player in the industry, and proceeded to purchase six more companies over the next 12 years. It’s been quite successful for investors. AIP launched an IPO for Rev Group in 2017 and sold a portion of its stake in the company for $275 million, and then got out completely in 2024 by selling its remaining shares for $127.6 million.

But before cashing out, AIP’s purchase of so many manufacturers enabled Rev Group to join the companies Oshkosh and Rosenbauer as dominant players in the industry. As a result, the lawsuit argues they gained near monopolistic pricing powers.

Kelly, the union president, says costs have doubled in the past decade. Pumper trucks cost about $1 million; ladder trucks roughly $2 million. To make matters worse, Kelly testified that the price often changes after they’re ordered.

Manufacturers wield their market power to impose surprise price hikes after order placement through “floating” price terms. These price hikes exacerbate other budget constraints. Fire departments with budget challenges have had to cancel essential training and even lay off fire fighters.

Awesome Returns Bro!

In 2025, REV Group’s stock price surged 93%, while Oshkosh rose 33%. Both companies outperformed the S&P 500, which increased 16.5% for the year.

In REV’s blowout third-quarter 2025 earnings call — a day in which its stock jumped 19% — CEO Mark Skanechnie stated:

Given the inventory levels we had on hand at the start of the quarter, along with the efforts of our supply chain team, we were able to mitigate a portion of the expected inflationary impacts related to tariffs within the third quarter, which resulted in delivering a 28% incremental margin year over year as compared to our prior guidance of twenty percent to 25% incremental margin for the 2025.

The increase [in incremental margin] versus last year was related to the continued demand for fire apparatus and ambulance units as well as pricing actions, partially offset by the benefit of the increased throughput mentioned earlier.

In other words, the floating price hikes weren’t completely tied to increased costs during production, which typically takes a year to 18 months, depending on the truck. A 28% incremental margin is generally considered outstanding for vehicle manufacturers.

Antitrust Complaints

The Newstead Fire Department filed its class action complaint on October 31 against REV Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer. From the complaint:

Beginning in or about January 2016, Manufacturing Defendants entered into an agreement, combination, or conspiracy to limit the supply, and to fix, raise, maintain, or stabilize prices of Fire Trucks sold in the United States at supra-competitive levels. As a result of the unlawful conduct of Defendants, Plaintiff and Class members paid artificially inflated prices for Fire Trucks and as a result have suffered antitrust injury in violation of the federal antitrust laws.

The result, the lawsuit argues, is inflated prices with long wait times that “have forced municipalities to keep older and less reliable Fire Trucks” or forced them to redirect funding to cover the higher costs.

This complaint came on the heels of a similar antitrust complaint that La Crosse, Wisconsin, filed in August against the three companies.

Rev Group, Oshkosh, and Rosenbauer told Reuters, “the company believes the suit is meritless and intends to challenge the allegations in court.”

Additionally, In April 2025 Senators Elizabeth Warren (D) and Senator Jim Banks (R) opened an investigation into this matter, making the following statement,

While CEOs and shareholders pad their pockets, consolidation in the industry impedes fire fighters’ ability to do their jobs safely and effectively, squeezes fire departments’ budgets, and forces taxpayers to bear the consequences. We have heard from dozens of fire departments in Massachusetts, Indiana, and elsewhere about difficulties they have faced related to serial roll-ups of fire truck manufacturers, including delivery delays, defective parts, and price increases… Private equity consolidation of fire truck manufacturers has led to higher costs and a nationwide shortage of fire trucks.

In response, Mike Virnig of The Rev Group told the New York Times that the industry has had a shortage in skilled labor and that it was affected by pandemic supply chain disruptions. The Times reports he also said a backlog resulted from a flood of orders that came with federal stimulus money.

Perhaps, but jacking up prices during production and bragging about a 28% incremental margin that resulted from doing that doesn’t instill confidence that everything is aboveboard. A year-over-year stock price increase of 93% probably does not represent a company struggling to meet its customers’ needs. It represents the market perception that REV Group has its customers over a very profitable barrel.

You can also listen to Eric Salzman discuss this topic on his podcast, “Monkey Business.”