Fire Apparatus is Sutphen Family’s History

If you’re in the Sutphen family, you make firetrucks.

The family has been doing so for more than a century, now working from a factory near Dublin.

Sutphen Corp. has remained in the family through generations of technological upheaval and escalating prices. Almost everything has changed except for the name.

Even the colors have evolved. Instead of just “fire-engine red,” buyers can now choose from hundred of shades of red, along with yellow and many others.

“We all worked here from the time we were little kids,” said Julie Sutphen Phelps, the company’s vice president and president of a subsidiary that makes aerial platforms and ladders.

The parents used to bring their children into the office on Saturdays, she said. The girls did odd jobs in the offices, such as addressing postcards. The boys swept floors and sorted nuts and bolts.

“It was a big deal because we got to go to the factory,” said Drew Sutphen, the company’s president. This was special to him because it was like a family reunion, a chance to see relatives who often traveled during the week.

Phelps and Sutphen laughed as they told stories, surrounded by portraits of the generations that preceded them. The two of them, both 56, are first cousins, and the great-grandchildren of the founder. They are the top two executives in a business that employs about 350, a figure that includes more than a dozen family members.

Visitors to the plant are greeted by a reception desk that looks like the front of a firetruck, with working lights and a siren. Inside the complex, there is a near-constant sound of buzzing and grinding of tools. The company makes the truck bodies and many related parts in-house. The engines and transmissions come from an outside supplier.

A Sutphen truck is a big-ticket item, custom-made with prices ranging from $300,000 to $1.4 million, and an average price of about $580,000.

Industry Recovering

The larger firetruck industry is led by a few super-size players. Sutphen Corp. occupies a middle ground, with roughly 10 percent of the market, making it one of the smallest of the large producers, or one of the largest of the small producers, company officials said.

Among the large competitors is Pierce Manufacturing, a subsidiary of Oshkosh Corp. of Wisconsin.

The industry is in a long and gradual recovery from the 2008 recession, said Chris McLoone, editor for Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment, a trade magazine. He also is a volunteer firefighter for his community in the Philadelphia suburbs.

“We are on the way back up,” he said about firetruck manufacturers. “Have we reached the pinnacle of where we’re going to reach? I’m not sure we’ve reached it yet.”

Sales are closely tied to the financial health of local governments that make up most of the buyers, he said. When local budgets get cut, officials often wait to replace old trucks.

McLoone describes Sutphen as a well-known player in the industry. “When I think of Sutphen, I think of their aerial devices,” he said, referring to the company’s telescoping ladders and aerial platforms.

Sutphen has been transformed because of new technology and because of decisions to change its retail model, Drew Sutphen said. The greatest shift on the manufacturing side is the use of computer modeling, which makes it easier and faster to do custom designs.

“In the old days, you used paper, vellum and a straight edge,” he said.

On the sales side, Sutphen has increased its reliance on independent dealers. This has helped the company compete outside of its core regions in the Midwest and East.

Among the dealers is David Stonitsch, owner of South Florida Emergency Vehicles in Fort Myers, Fla., which opened in 2002.

He learned of Sutphen in the 1990s when he was chief of a volunteer fire department in central Missouri. His department served a lake community that had narrow roads and lots of tight spaces. He shopped around and found that Sutphen trucks were lighter and more maneuverable than other options.

“That allowed us to get where we needed to go,” he said.

At that time, his day job was running a small manufacturer of small firetrucks. He made a deal with Sutphen to begin distributing his products.

Then he sold the business to another entrepreneur and moved to Florida. Drew Sutphen got in touch and said Sutphen Corp. was expanding its dealer network and was looking for an independent retailer to serve all of Florida.

When working with customers, Stonitsch emphasizes that Sutphen is small enough that the top executives are aware of each truck order, and can be reached if there are any problems. This is important when there is a rush order for a repair part or a warranty issue, he said.

“I don’t know that I could be a dealer and go through a corporate structure,” Stonitsch said.

Company History

Sutphen Corp. has a lineage that goes back to 1890 in Columbus, when C.H. Sutphen started selling hose and axes for use by firefighters. The company later got into the fire-vehicle business, with horse-drawn wagons, and later motorized vehicles.

It had offices Downtown, including a stint in the LeVeque Tower. From 1947 to 1966, the main plant and offices were on Dublin Road near Grandview Heights.

The company moved to its current location in 1966. From this base, Sutphen began to develop new towers and ladders for firetrucks.

It has smaller plants in Hilliard and Springfield in Ohio, and in Monticello, N.Y.

Looking ahead, Drew Sutphen wants to continue to add dealers and begin to develop international sales. Right now, 12 percent of sales are outside of the United States, and he would like to see that rise to 20 percent.

He and Phelps are not planning to retire any time soon. When they do, the new leaders likely will come from a group that includes the next generation of family and some managers who are not family, he said.

Even after decades at the company, he remains excited about coming to work to do a job that he describes as “making trucks that save lives.”

dgearino@dispatch.com

@DanGearino