Smeal/ALF ?

[Woodbridge]

I was looking at the HGACbuy.org site and came across the Smeal Fire apparatus company offering a ALF chassis cab on there aerials & pumpers, anyone seen or heard of this before. It looks like smeal wants to sell more than there Spartan chassis apparatus !

[ctxffman]

I saw that also. Was wondering what was going on.

[BoxAlarm187]

I was told several months ago that ALF was going to build Smeal a custom cab/chassis (anyone remember the Seagrave Concorde?), but I haven't seen any releases on it yet.

[Woodbridge]

Are you saying that ALF built the chassis cab for Seagrave a few years back when they sold the aluminum cabs?

[BoxAlarm187]

The Seagrave Concorde was an ALF product, yes.

[Squad46]

The Seagrave Concorde was an ALF product, yes.

Absolutely not!

The Concorde chassis was a legitimate Seagrave cab and chassis. It was built in Clintonville Wisconsin next to the Marauder.

The Concorde was designed by the same engineer who designed the ALF Eagle. The Concorde came about when Jim Hebe purchased Seagrave.

That should answer your question.

[Woodbridge]

Absolutely not!

The Concorde chassis was a legitimate Seagrave cab and chassis. It was built in Clintonville Wisconsin next to the Marauder.

The Concorde was designed by the same engineer who designed the ALF Eagle. The Concorde came about when Jim Hebe purchased Seagrave.

That should answer your question.

How about the Seagrave Attacker chassis, who built it ?

[bigbluefire]

The Seagrave Flame and Attacker were one in the same...built by Seagrave in-house...and not well received. At one time, Hebe/Seagrave had some sort of deal with Rosenbauer in which Seagrave had access to RK aerials (mid-mount and rear-mount towers) and, in exchange, Rosenbauer could market the Flame/Attacker cab. Seagrave eventually ceased using RK products and I'm not sure Rosenbauer ever used that cab.

[rmcatee1]

The Seagrave Flame and Attacker were one in the same...built by Seagrave in-house...and not well received. At one time, Hebe/Seagrave had some sort of deal with Rosenbauer in which Seagrave had access to RK aerials (mid-mount and rear-mount towers) and, in exchange, Rosenbauer could market the Flame/Attacker cab. Seagrave eventually ceased using RK products and I'm not sure Rosenbauer ever used that cab.

There were two (2) what I called Rosengraves. One was a flat roof and the other was a raised roof. Both were called the Rosenbauer Sentinel. But actually, Seagrave called them FWD chassis. I think these were the only two chassis received and both sold as demo's if recall correctly. Personally, I liked the Flame/Attacker/FWD cab. Lots of room and big doors.

[CanadianFyrTrks]

The City of Mississauga, Ontario used to run ALF/Smeals from the early 2000s

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...firetruck2.jpg

[ctxffman]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

The new Smeal / ALF cab. One way to ruin a perfectly good truck.

[Chief1FF]

Looked at them today look nice. More head room then a Spartan. Have driven both Spartans and ALF's and the ALF has a much nicer ride then the Spartans. Be curious to see what the Smeals ride like.

Chief1FF

[ENG103]

I wonder if this announcement will be followed by Spartan announcing that they will be dropping Smeal??????

[npfd801]

I wonder if this announcement will be followed by Spartan announcing that they will be dropping Smeal??????

That was one of the rumors floating around in Indy...

Spartan, in my opinion, has effectively caused their own impending death in the last year. A slow death that started when they decided they needed to build their own apparatus with the creation of Crimson from their bought up brands. The decision to shut off their largest customer generating over 50% of their production volume by shutting down Rosenbauer. The decision to totally eliminate any separation between the Spartan and Crimson brands by rebranding the apparatus line to Spartan ERV. Does anyone else see this as a fight where Spartan somehow thinks they can take on Rosenbauer? Spartans alliance with Giamex screams this to me. Does anyone else remember Giamex coming to FDIC a few years ago, with a couple of Plastisol bodied units and an aerial on a Spartan? They didn't make much market penetration then that I can see. The Telstar boom looks nice enough, but if Rosenbauer sold ten T-Rex's last year (I believe this is accurate) with all the work they've done with Metz working on gaining acceptance in the U.S. market for how many years, how is Spartan ERV going to do?

I truly believe that Spartan probably had the best chassis on the market with their ability to customize in so many ways with cab lengths, heights, suspensions, etc. We own four of them. Not sure there will be a fifth, especially since my options for body builders is even more limited than in the past.

[ladderman]

Spartan is run by some extremely intelligent people who really understand the fire business, trust me this is a very deliberate strategy being employed by Spartan all with the goal in my opinion to go after Pierce and Rosenbaurer.

[npfd801]

Having been in the apparatus sales business a number of years, my opinion differs. Essentially Spartan is hedging their bets that the Spartan chassis option is more important to customers than the choices of body and aerial. It has already cost them 50% (or more?) of their chassis sales with Rosenbauer alone.

Best of luck to them.

[firepundit]

Spartan is run by some extremely intelligent people who really understand the fire business, trust me this is a very deliberate strategy being employed by Spartan all with the goal in my opinion to go after Pierce and Rosenbaurer.

Really? Their long range plans for the apparatus division changes every six months. Someone from Spartan told me that their long range plans depend on who John sat next to on his last flight.

[donethat]

Is the new Smeal chassis a private label being built by ALF? The door window of the Smeal looks like the ALF cab's window.

[LeadOff]

Is the new Smeal chassis a private label being built by ALF? The door window of the Smeal looks like the ALF cab's window.

I believe it's the same as what Spartan currently does for Smeal by putting on a different facia on the Gladiator cab to create the Sirius cab with Smeal's name on it. Now ALF puts on a new facia on their Eagle cab for Smeal so they can call it the Smeal Sentron. Big deal, it's still an ALF to me.

[LeadOff]

Well since we're on the ALF topic, I had to bring this rather interesting bit of news up. In another forum, it was just reported (not by me!) that ALF was just evicted from the Summerville SC production facility. Another individual replied that this was nothing new and added that ALF was recently "removed" from the LTI facility in Ephrata PA that they were leasing. WFT is going on here? If it was much earlier in the month I would have thought it was an April Fools joke. Can anybody shed any more light on this or is this just another chapter in ALF's riddle wrapped in an enigma?