Earl Everhart stands in front of the bush hog that he invented to knock down large trees and brush that he calls his “brush breaker” which can be used to get into forests during fire emergencies. Photo by Rob Wills, The Northfield News Vermont Fire Technologies of Williamstown is the place to go throughout the New England area when looking for special designs in fire vehicles.

Earl Everhart said that his interested in fire equipment started early in his life. “Actually it was when I was four years old. I grew up in Lexington, North Carolina. My father was a good friend of the local fire chief so he would take me up to the station. Fire trucks kind of grew on me.” Mr. Everhart described that when he was in his junior and senior year in high school, the local fire chief allowed him to come in as a volunteer. He said, “In my senior year, he suggested I like the apparatus end better than the firefighting end so why don’t’ you get a ticket in engineering and I will help you in the industry, which I did and that’s where I have been ever since.” The first fire truck Mr. Everhart built was during his college years for a small company in Roanoke, VA.

According to Mr. Everhart, Jim Pinard, who had been with the Middlesex Fore Apparatus in Montpelier, a family owned company that closed down in 1991, came to Williamstown with four people to open the new company. At the time, Mr. Everhart explained, it was called The American Rural Fire Apparatus. Mr. Everhart said that people had trouble understanding the word “rural” over the phone. “People would call and say “what?” I would then say American Boon-Docks,” Mr. Everhart said. It was later changed to its current name.

“We primarily concentrate on New England,” Mr. Everhart said. “When I came up here they were advertising in a national magazine, there is a couple in California one or two in Alaska .The only problem is if you have a warranty problem, that is far away and it just kills you. There is plenty of business here in New England for us and it works well with us as the customers can come in periodically to see the truck being built. If they want any changes, we can do that.” The company receives about 12 to 15 orders a year.

An order starts with customized specifications from the customer. Mr. Everhart said they first get a chassis, which can take three or four months to receive. Currently there are six workers at the company, four mechanics on the floor working on fabrication, two or three are contract people. One the chassis is received, according to Mr. Everhart, the process can take four or five months to complete.

A fire truck unique to the Cape Cod area is built by Vermont Fire Technologies and first designed by Mr. Everhart in 1963, called a Brush Breaker. The truck weighs approximately 16 tons and operates as a battering ram. The front of the truck is guarded by huge pipes and grading like a protective helmet. The underside of the truck is sheathed in 3/8 inch steel plates. The Brush Breaker is the first to arrive in a brush/tree fire, plowing a path, knocking over eight inch oak and 12 inch pine trees. Mr. Everhart said that this truck would not work well in Vermont with too much hardwood.

The truck, Mr. Everhart explains, carries an 800-gallon polypropylene water tank. Foam can be injected into the water to increase its effectiveness.

“In spite of the economy,” Mr. Everhart said, we fortunate but we don’t try to compete with the big manufacturers their stock trucks and their run of the mill trucks I look for the niche markets, specialty markets. I guess its stuff no one else wants to build but we’ll take it.”

Mr. Everhart continues, “I think a little piece of me goes out with every truck I could never sit down and put down a list of all the trucks I have ever had dealings with, I have been involved with, but invariably you mention a towns name and I have a truck there and a little story that goes with it, something to remember about it. It’s a very fraternal industry. The customers and manufacturers are very close. There is a lot of exchange that goes on during the course of building a truck.”

Mr. Everhart recalls that if wasn’t for his direction in the fire industry, he would have never met the woman he would spend the rest of his life with. He said, “I met my wife at a fire. I was working my Dads service station one night, pretty cold. We had a fire alarm about a block from the service station so I went directly to the empty house, it was vacant and I didn’t know if there was anyone in there or not and it was beginning to burn pretty good so I went in to check it before the trucks went in there. Just when I was coming out a family was coming in with a hose line they let go and just soaked the hell out of me. I came back out and my future wife, actually lived about two blocks from the service station, but I never met her, didn’t know her, and she and her family when they heard the commotion they came and were watching and she felt sorry for me being cold and wet and asked me to come down to her house and have a cup of coffee and that’s the way it started. If it weren’t for that fire, I would have never known her.”