Page 26 - MidJersey Business - November/December 2014

FIRST

RESPONDERS

PL EMERGENCY VEHICLES BUILDS THE ULTIMATE LIFE-SAVING TOOLS

n Sept. 11, 2001, emergency service in a staging area in North Jersey), but their intent

units across the tri-state area were exempliied everything that PL Emergency Vehicles
scrambling to reach the wreckage is all about. This is a company dedicated to building

at Ground Zero. Operations at
quality vehicles for the sole purpose of saving lives.
PL Custom Emergency Vehicles The family-owned company was born in 1946 in

Ocame to a halt and ambulances and rescue vehicles Pompton Lakes (hence, the PL in its name). Back
that were not quite complete were pulled from the then, it built ireighting equipment and related

assembly line, driven directly of the plant loor by apparatus. By the 1960s, when it was known as PL

employees, and headed straight up the turnpike as Custom Body, it built ambulance vehicles. Founded
part of a caravan of irst responders determined to by Martin “Bud” Smock, a visionary entrepreneur,

help any way they could.
the company took a leap of faith in 1970 when
The half-built emergency vehicles never made it ambulance construction was at a crossroads and

all the way to lower Manhattan (they were corralled
the modular ambulances we see on the road today

business
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