Hi, I’m Paul Darley, and thanks for tuning into our April issue of Inside Darley. We just got back from the FAMA meeting, that’s the Fire Apparatus Manufacturers Association meeting, and I’ll tell you, all of the talk down there was about industry statistics. And, while I can’t share those details with you, unless you’re a FAMA member, what I can tell you is last year in 2022, there were over 6000 new fire apparatus sold here in the United States.
And that was by far, a record. And in fact, looking at the last six quarters, those are the strongest six quarters that we’ve ever had, going back to industry statistics that are over 50 years old, some pretty interesting things. And, all of the fire apparatus manufacturers have the longest lead times that they’ve ever had. So if you’re thinking of a new fire apparatus, we’d encourage you to get out in front of that, particularly with some of the emissions changes taking place in 2026. One of the other areas that we talked about was the high growth in wildland firefighting vehicles. And in fact, our first attachment here is a special report that just came out from President Council of Advisors of Science and Technology, and it was a report submitted to President Biden relative to modernizing wildland firefighting to protect our firefighters.
So, some interesting stuff here at that famous meeting. We also had Eric Schlett, he’s the head of the FDIC conference taking place (the Fire Department Instructors Conference) down in Indianapolis April 27 through the 29th. And he reported that pre-registration numbers as of 30 days out, were roughly 36% ahead of last year and 15% ahead of pre COVID times in 2019. So, great tracking to maybe have even 35,000 attendees this year, if you can imagine.
We certainly invite you to come by. We’re going to be in the same location. We’re in booth number 3457. Hopefully you’ll come by. We’ve got a lot of new products, and the next attachment is our Spring Summer Darley Times newsletter. And I’ll tell you, it’s just chock full of information.
On page one, we are really excited to have Wilson Jones join our corporate board of directors. Wilson is no stranger to either the fire or the defense markets, having been the CEO of Oshkosh Corporation and CEO of Pierce at one time. So – welcome to Wilson. Also on page one, you’ll see that we were named one of the top 100 Defense contractors here in America, so named number 68 – for our sales to the DoD in 2022. On page three and on page seven, you’ll see some exciting new products that we’re going to be showing off at the FDIC conference and that we’re releasing from virtual reality, augmented reality, and also a lot of new products surrounding EV, electrical vehicle fires and maintenance of those.
So you’ll check out our new fire blanket that’s on display and I’ll tell you, there’s an article in Motley Fool that just came out, and it said, by the year 2040, every new car sold in America will be an EV. Now, that quote was not by Greta Thunberg. It wasn’t by Elon Musk. It wasn’t by President Biden or Al Gore. It was actually by Darren Woodson, who is the CEO of ExxonMobil. So pretty interesting. And I’ll tell you, we’ve got some great products that will prevent runaways in the event of (an emergency) – our new EV plug and some other new products that are really target marketed for that on page seven of that newsletter. Please note we’ve also got our Pump School coming up in Chippewa Falls May 8 to the 9th. We’ve attached information on that for you.
And on page eight, you’ll see some of the more than 100 trade shows that we’ll be exhibiting at in 2023. So including our Soft Week, which is going to be taking place in Tampa May 8 to the 11th, where we’ll have a very strong presence. And if you’re a company who attends trade shows, you might want to share our last attachment, which is Ten Rules of Trade Show Etiquette. Share that with your team. So thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley.
If there’s anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you’ll reach out to us.
Resources:
Tradeshow Etiquette – 10 Rules to follow (PDF)
The 10 Commandments of Tradeshow Etiquette (PDF)
Modernizing Wildland Firefighting to Protect our Firefighters (PDF)
Darley Times Spring-Summer 2023 (PDF)
100 Largest DOD Vendors 2022 (PDF)
