August 2007

Saulsbury Is Back In Business

By Ed Ballam

It’s 7 a.m. and Alan Saulsbury is sitting in his kitchen eating his usual breakfast – cereal, fruit and coffee. He has already been up for a while, checking and returning e-mail messages and making, a couple of overseas phone calls. He’s had about five hours of sleep, plenty for him.

It’s a busy day for Alan, like many of the ones he’s had in the past two years since he decided to get back into building fire trucks – at least the bodies. He’ll meet with the chairman of the industrial development committee in the community where he plans to build a new plant, talk to folks in the Netherlands, where the new truck bodies are currently being made, and meet with his new plant coordinator.

After four years, Saulsbury is back in the fire truck business, and he’s loving every minute of it. At 64, he could be sitting back, drowning worms from the deck of his boat in Skaneateles Lake, one of New York’s famed Finger Lakes, where his Glen Haven home sits. Saulsbury, an icon in the fire service industry, has nothing to prove. His namesake company Saulsbury Fire Apparatus, built some of the best fire trucks on the market in its heyday. The nearly 60-year-old, family-owned company was sold to Federal Signal in 1998, and he made a profit that would allow him to live his retirement years comfortably.

Yet, Saulsbury, like a moth to the flame, has been drawn back to the fire service, yet again for another venture. A fist-sized polished stone on the desk in his Cortland, N.Y., office says a lot about his character. A gift from a friend years ago, the rock has “passion” in capital letters engraved upon it.

“I love to work,” Saulsbury said with conviction. “I love the industry, without a doubt. My friends in the industry, competitors or not, are part of the Saulsbury family… I just love what I do. I think I’m knowledgeable in the business, so I feel at ease in it and I feel I still have something to contribute.”

His rebirth has taken the form of a new venture, Plastisol Composites North America, a business dedicated to bringing glassfiber reinforced polyester (GRP)-bodied fire and emergency services apparatus to North America.

In the Netherlands, where Plastisol was founded 35 years ago, 50 percent of apparatus are made of composite material, and the number in Europe is about 25 percent. Saulsbury believed it was time the technology found its way across the pond, and he is the man at the helm, piloting its entry into the North American market where composite-bodied apparatus are virtually unknown. He’s so confident in the success of the venture that he broke ground this summer on a new manufacturing plant in neighboring Groton, N.Y., to make Plastisol cabs and bodies for emergency vehicles.

“I know I’m going to have a tough row to hoe in the United States,” he said. “But think about it, how many non-metallic bodies were sold 20 years ago? There weren’t any. Now, as much as 10 percent, maybe 500 non-metallic bodies are being sold. This is accepted and proven technology in the United States. Alan is not starting from scratch here.”

4th-Generation Firefighter

Indeed, although the Plastisol material may be new to him, building fire apparatus is not. He is a fourth generation firefighter and former president of Saulsbury Fire Apparatus, which was also based in central New York State and recognized as one of the finest builders of high-quality equipment in the nation.

Alan Saulsbury’s great-great grandfather, Henry, was chief of the Tully (N.Y.) Hose Company, a fire department he helped organized in 1896. As the town’s blacksmith, Henry built the department’s ladder and hose wagons. In 1900, Henry opened Saulsbury Garage where he sold the area’s first motorized cars.

Henry’s son, Carl, was also a member of the Tully Hose Company, and Carl’s son, Fancher “Sam” Saulsbury was a machinist and welder who became a part-time firefighter in the nearby town of Cortland in 1940. Alan was born in 1943, and in 1948 his father Sam started selling fire apparatus and fire fighting equipment.

The Company Is Born

In 1952, Sam moved to Preble, N.Y., joined the Preble Fire Department and was elected chief in 1954. In 1956, Sam volunteered to fix an accident-damaged fire department Ford utility truck, a three-month job done right at the station. Impressed with the work, the firefighters awarded Sam a contract in 1957 to build a new tanker – and Saulsbury Fire Equipment was born.

In the meantime, at age 18 Alan went to the Oklahoma State University of Fire Protection and left OSU at the top of his class. He worked for a large insurance company for a 9-year stint before migrating back to the family fire truck business, where he worked with his father and brother, Richard.

In 1997, faced with the threat of a possible shortage of custom cabs and chassis upon which to build apparatus, the Saulsburys sold their business to Federal Signal, the parent company of E-ONE.

At the time, Saulsbury Fire Apparatus and Equipment was headquartered in Tully, employed 275 people and grossed nearly $48 million in apparatus sales annually. In all, the company had built over 3,000 custom built apparatus, many one-of-a-kind vehicles that were placed in service all over the world. Under the terms of the sale, Alan and his son, Eric, the fifth generation Saulsbury in the fire service, continued to be partially involved with some of the day-to-day operations of the Tully plant.

In 2003, Federal Signal closed the Saulsbury plant in Tully, N.Y., and moved the operation to E-ONE’s headquarters in Ocala, Fla., where it was added it to the product line-up as a stainless steel series. The Saulsbury name virtually disappeared from the fire apparatus industry.

But Alan Saulsbury did not disappear. Far from it. He started a business called Fire Spec Services, with his daughters, Chris Saulsbury McNamara and Wendy Saulsbury. Fire Spec is a consulting and technical specification writing company that assists component suppliers and apparatus manufacturers in configuration and sales software for fire industry products.

He also worked as a consultant for Elkhart Brass, Fire Research Corporation and several fire departments on apparatus purchasing and specification writing.

In 2005, he was inspired to import a product he saw at the once-every-five-years international Interschutz Fire Show in Germany to get back into business. He assisted in bringing new technology to the states through a joint venture with Fireco Light Towers, a pneumatic telescoping tower for scene lighting, and Tempest Technology, based in Fresno, Calif. Earlier this year, he sold his interest in that business to devote himself full-time to the Plastisol endeavor, a product that more reflects his passion for fire apparatus.

A long-time member of the National Fire Protection Association’s 1901 technical committee on fire apparatus, Saulsbury was presented the prestigious Joe Fishelson Award at the 2006 Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC) in recognition of individuals who make significant customer service contributions to the fire service through the fire protection industry. Saulsbury attends nearly every major conference presenting seminars on apparatus safety, spec writing and NFPA standards.

Saulsbury and his family have other business interests outside the fire industry. He and his son in-law have a trucking business with about 25 bulk and flatbed trucks. That’s in addition to his role as husband, father and grandfather to his ever growing family, roles of which he is proud. His wife of 46 years, Nancy, operates a bed and breakfast at the couple’s home.

After Breakfast

Saulsbury’s son, Eric, has since become the central New York dealer for KME and started SDC Corporation (Saulsbury Davis Companies), an automotive and fire apparatus service and sales business.

After breakfast, and a few morning phone calls in his temporary office in Cortland, N.Y., Saulsbury reflected on his career and his desire to get back into the fire truck business. When he sold the business, he agreed to an eight-year non-compete clause that prevented him from building fire trucks. Once that provision expired, he was back and looking for a new fire apparatus adventure.

“I feel I’ve got something to contribute,” he said, seated at his desk, surrounded by photos of family and friends in the fire service. “I’m always trying to build a better fire truck or a safer design. I’m passionate about that. I try to push the envelope a little bit too, just like my dear friends Jack McLaughlin of FRC, Bill Darley and Dick Young of Performance Advantage, all going strong at over 70 years old.”

He picked up his cell phone and punched buttons to connect him half a world away before it was too late in the business day in Wanroij, a community in the south of the Netherlands. At the other end of the line was Rob Walraven, managing director and owner of Plastisol, a company his father founded in 1973. Saulsbury had some questions for him about a new body design and wanted to give him an update about progress on the new North American plant.

Walraven said he and Saulsbury are “old friends” and he’s looking forward to the partnership.

“I’ve known Alan for many, many years,” Walraven said in a telephone interview. “I knew him before he sold his business to Federal Signal. He wanted to do business with us before he sold.”

In fact, Walraven said Federal Signal bought 50 percent of the shares of Plastisol several years ago when Federal Signal and E-ONE had big plans to bring the composite bodies to North America. But big management changes brought even bigger changes to the business model. “So I bought back the shares,” Walraven said, “and when Alan finished his non-compete, we said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Encouraged By Potential

For Plastisol, he said the United States represents a solid market and the potential exists for both Plastisol in the Netherlands and for Plastisol Composites in North and South America to be “very, very successful.”

“It is a new product in America and we are very, very encouraged by the potential,” he said, noting that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 apparatus sold in North America annually. Even a 10 percent market share would translate into a considerable opportunity for Plastisol, he said.

The plant in the Netherlands employs about 125 people producing over 800 cabs and bodies annually. The plant Saulsbury is building in Groton, which will be the North American headquarters for Plastisol, will be initially large enough to comfortably build over 250 bodies annually with expansion plans to equal Holland’s production.

Saulsbury has been in negotiations with the Village of Groton, county and state officials for nearly a year, developing a suitable sight in a municipally owned industrial park in Groton for the plant where he will assemble the Plastisol truck bodies using panels that will continue to be made in the Netherlands.

Saulsbury says the Village of Groton has been very excited about his move to the town and offered him a very attractive package, including a 35-acre site and helping him secure grants, loans and tax abatements.

Gary Watrous, the chairman of Groton’s Industry Development Agency (IDA), who is also vice president of the privately owned First National Bank of Groton, said his town is looking forward to having Saulsbury’s new business.

“What Alan is proposing is nearly perfect,” said Watrous. “It’s what every community wants. A nice clean business building fire trucks. It’s like mom and pop and ice cream. They could have gone wherever they wanted, and we are glad they chose to locate here.”

Groton was the world headquarters for Smith Corona Typewriters, which employed 5,000 people at its height in enormous buildings in the village. Everyone knows what happened to typewriters. Smith Corona went out of business in 1983, leaving a vacant and contaminated site for the town to deal with. Watrous said he was part of the team that helped clean up the site and make the land available to other businesses. Since then, the IDA, has been working to find good employers to bring back the town.

Redeeming A Family Name

“We have been very selective,” Watrous said. “We know that Plastisol will start off small, maybe 35 employees to start, but we recognize the potential for many more jobs in the next three to five years, and that’s why we have been willing to work with Alan.”

Saulsbury said many communities were competing to get Plastisol, and he picked the one that made the most sense and made the best offer. He was not, however, willing to look outside of the central New York area. A lot of people lost good jobs when Federal Signal decided to move Saulsbury operations to Ocala, and although Saulsbury can’t be held responsible for that corporate decision, he said he feels a “deep personal loss” and a need to redeem the family name.

“The Saulsburys have been part of this valley for 117 years, and I have no interest in moving anywhere outside this area,” said. “This is where our family and our friends are.”

Riding around in his white Ford pickup, Saulsbury pointed out farms that were once owned by family members, fields where he hunted as a kid and continues to hunt when he has time, and the homes of friends. He stopped on the side of the road and pointed to a scenic vista of rolling hills and the deep blue Skaneateles Lake that is as much a part of him as building fire trucks.

“Look at that, how can you not love that scene?” he asked.

But there was not much time for a lot of sight seeing because he still had to talk to his plant coordinator and make some more phone calls before the day was over.

Saulsbury recently hired Doug Seymour to serve as engineering and plant coordinator for Plastisol Composites North America when the new factory opens in January. Seymour was first hired by Saulsbury in 1989 and continued to work for the company through the plant transitions. He served as the sales engineer and stainless steel production coordinator for the Saulsbury custom stainless steel product line until the line was eliminated earlier this year.

No Hesitation

When Saulsbury learned that Seymour was available, he contacted him, and Seymour didn’t hesitate.

“I love what I do,” Seymour said. “I’ll be doing whatever it takes to get product out the door and work wherever I’m needed. I think it’s an exciting opportunity to be in on the ground floor like this.”

He is expecting to visit the Plastisol plant in the Netherlands for a couple of weeks to learn more about the company and how the product is made. After nearly three decades making stainless steel fire apparatus, he readily sees the advantages of composite bodies over poly, aluminum or steel bodies.

Staking A Reputation

“The first thing is, it’s lighter weight and everyone likes lightweight,” Seymour said. “Next, it’s corrosion free. Basically, there are two metals that are used for apparatus, aluminum and steel. There are some poly bodies out there, but they’re not composites and composite is more rugged than poly. So, I think it’s the perfect product at the perfect time. It’s very exciting.”

Saulsbury obviously thinks so too. He’s staking his illustrious reputation on it and trying to win the North American market over to his way of thinking. Saulsbury pioneered roll-up compartment doors, hydraulic generators, light towers, rear-mount pumps, rescue pumpers, stainless steel apparatus, equipment mounting, and diagrammatic pump panels. Now, he’s looking to be an innovator of bodies of the future.

“If there’s one thing I can say it’s Alan Saulsbury is back and he’s ready for challenges,” Saulsbury said. “I’m ready to go again to help the fire service… There’s nothing better than a guy loving his profession and never having to call it work. It’s like I’ve never had a job. I’ve had a hobby for life.”

Alan Saulsbury at his desk in his Cortland, N.Y. office.                     (Staff Photo)

The Plastisol composite laminates are comprised many layers of Glassfiber Reinforced Polyester and one of a closed-cell, high-density foam to give it a sandwich appearance.