Apparatus

E-ONE Factory Tour Reveals Inner Workings of Company

March 31, 2015

E-ONE opened its doors to the media to show the operations of more than 800 employees building fire trucks.

Near the middle of one of E-ONE's assembly plants, nearly completed cabs meet up with nearly completed chassis. After the two are mated, the cabs and chassis move further along the process, receiving additional components like bodies, tanks, pumps and aerial devices depending on the type of apparatus that's been ordered.

E-ONE opened its doors for to the fire service media for a three-hour tour through its Ocala campus, covering hundreds of thousands of square feet of manufacturing facilities spread over more than 30 acres in central Florida.

The company was founded in 1974 by Bob Wormser, an engineer who thought aluminum fire trucks would be a good way to fight corrosion. From the humble beginnings to an industry icon, E-ONE employs more than 800 people building hundreds of apparatus annually from brush trucks and simple tankers/tenders, to highly customized pumpers, ARFFs, and state-of-the-art aerials, now in aluminum and steel.

See: E-ONE Makes Its First Steel Aerial

E-ONE is an Allied Specialty Vehicles (ASV) subsidiary, the largest manufacturer of emergency vehicles in North America with names like AEV, Wheeled Coach, Horton Emergency Vehicles, Leader, Road Rescue, McCoy Miller and others in its stable.

- Ed Ballam