Pierce Tour

It was a long but exciting trip as Chris, Benny and I visited the Pierce Fire Truck factory in Appleton, Wisconsin this past week. We toured three different plants where various components and complete fire trucks are built. Things were a little slow at the plant these days, as there were only 400 custom fire trucks going through the assembly line. (the commercial chassis trucks are built at another plant in Florida) The tour started at the main plant where the fire trucks are assembled. Cabs are mated to chassis, pump bodies are installed, the cabinets and water tanks put in place as well as all other components that make up a complete fire truck. At the second factory, the cabs, pump housings and bodies are constructed. This plant also had several large rescue trucks under construction. Here the ladders and towers are also installed on the chassis. Airport crash trucks are also built here including 37 units for Pakistan. The third plant on the tour was located about 60 miles away. Here the ladders are assembled and painted (approximately 1 complete ladder assembly per day) This plant also builds equipment for Caterpillar, military vehicles, snow blowers for airports and marine hoists used to transport and move boats of all sizes. A lot of diversity in these places. The Pierce Company and WFR (the local distributor) where awesome hosts. All of our travel, meals and accomodation were all taken care of. In Wisconsin, they like their deep fried food. Even tried a deep fried fillet steak.
As for Pierce Trucks, these are quite impressive units. Air bags are located in the cabs as well as roll over protection and advanced suspension systems to provide additional vehicle stability. Many new and interesting ideas where gathered that we can certainly incorporate into future apparatus when the time comes to order new equipment. Note the Canadian Flag on two of the fire trucks pictured. One is going to New Westminster and the other to Saskatoon.