Hi, I’m Paul Darley and thanks for tuning into our September and October issue of Inside Darley. Hopefully you and your family had a great summer and also a great Labor Day weekend. As someone just recently mentioned to me, the older I get, how many summers do you have left? So hopefully you’re making best use of that time.
You know, the end of the summer also marks fall for us and that means it’s time for the Darley Times, our fall winter issue, which you’ve attached for you here. On page one, you can read about some new contracts that we’ve received. One is with Sourcewell, the other is with the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense contract is a $2.8 billion contract over 10 years where we’ll be providing firefighting equipment to our war fighters around the world. You’ll also read about some new fire Advisory Board members that we’ve just added as well as our new Chief Financial Officer, Lee Wise, who we’re really excited about. He comes to us after a really strong background with Rockwell Collins, Brunswick and most recently leading a $2 billion distributors of distribution companies. So we’re really excited to have Lee on board.
On page two, you can read about our employees, who gave us our second highest employee engagement scores in over 25 years and read all about the reasons why they did that. Thank you for that vote of confidence to the great Darley team members. On page three, you can see some of our Darley defense team in action. In fact, we’ll be exhibiting and attending over 54 trade shows this year. You’ll also see we’ve attached for you a report that shows the top defense contractors in 2023 and Darley came in at #48 with sales of $953 million. An amazing job that our team, our defense team is doing and serving our war fighters.
On page seven, you can find some information on the Scottsdale Fire Department; they’re great Darley Demander Fire Department and also information on our pump school, which will be taking place at our plant in Chippewa Falls, WI, from October 8th to the 10th. We’ve attached an application for that as well and we would encourage you to attend that free, that free school. The Fire Apparatus Manufacturers Association just released a report on new orders for the second quarter of 2024 and they were down pretty substantially. In fact, it’s down 18% year over year compared to 2023 and down 27% when you compare it to 2022. Overall, it is back to pre-pandemic levels. If you are part of a fire department thinking about a new fire apparatus, just about all those new orders that were received have anticipated deliveries in 2029. We would encourage you to move ahead on that sooner than later.
Lastly, we’ve attached for you a report put out by the Bureau of Land Management on the North American seasonal assessment of wildfires. The number of wildfires across America is up over 3000% compared to last year, with roughly 1,000,000 acres burned across America with by over 5000 wildfires. Our hearts go out to those wildfires, firefighters who are working on the front lines and also those who are being impacted by these wildfires this year. They’re among our best customers, including the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, California, Department of Forestry, Cal Fire, and Cal OES, who all rely on Darley pumps. Our hearts go out, especially to them.
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.
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