Hi, I am Paul Darley and thanks for tuning into our January and February issue of Inside Darley. Hopefully you and your family had a very peaceful Christmas season, and 2024 is off to a good start for you.
Last month in our Inside Darley, we talked a lot about mega trends impacting the world and our country.
In this issue we want to focus in on the trends really impacting our fire and defense customers.
Looking at the US fire apparatus market, new orders for 2023 came in about 10% down to 2022, and it’s just about exactly where we had forecast.
The first attachment that we have here is from Fire Apparatus Magazine, where I and others in the industry give our forecast for 2024, where we anticipate, or I anticipate the market will be off about another 5%, but still well ahead of the pre-Covid levels. That’s good news for the fire service. The impact of the 2026 emission changes that are going to take place could push that up where fire departments decide to try to beat those changes.
We’ve attached an article for you on the summit held by the U.S. Fire Service back in October 2023 that identified the top seven issues facing the fire service. As you look at these, number one is clearly the wildland interface; the number of wildfires taking place as a result of climate change throughout America. Number two is the EV and energy transition. We at Darley recognized the implication of EV fires early on when we introduced our fire plug and our fire blankets and other EV solutions for you. Number three, employee retention and recruitment. Number four is cancer. Number five is suicide and mental health. Number six is legislative issues. Number seven is making sure that reporting systems on fires are updated.
We’ve also attached for you here the top issues facing our defense customers. Those are very similar to our fire customers along the lines of recruiting and retention and suicide or mental health and cyber. The one area there that’s significantly different is making sure that the industrial base is shored up. We at Darley really take that very seriously as well as our entire compliance process.
The last article that we’ve attached for you here and one of the overarching trends here is climate change. We’ve given you a report called the Fifth National Climate Assessment Report put out by the US government that has some interesting information. If you’re looking to serve that market and becoming aware of the trends that will impact your military organization, fire department, or your disaster awareness department, you should be aware of those.
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
