The vulnerability of innovative high-growth Pennsylvania companies to the current economic downturn came home suddenly to Waynesboro-based Foster Rescue early this year.
Sales had been expanding dynamically. Ben Franklin Technology Partners had funded the R&D behind Foster’s innovative pickup-truck trailers packed with the equipment needed to jump-start big rescue efforts at scenes of disasters. And, after three years, Bruce Foster, the company president, could report to the enterprise’s 22 family-member owners that towns and cities in 15 states had purchased Foster’s compact Auxiliary Rescue Units, which carry a 44-horsepower diesel engine, 20,000-watt generator, as well as standard rescue equipment including self-contained breathing apparatuses, air and hydraulic tools, air bags, and light towers.
Priced around $125,000–one-fifth of the $750,000 cost of conventional heavy rescue trucks with the same equipment in a motorized vehicle, Foster’s ARUs offered a bargain for public agencies–in response to which sales jumped 10 times from $250,000 to $2.5 million between 2005 and 2007. The product even gained national attention when Fox News Reporter Geraldo Rivera highlighted Foster’s “super trailers” in action after Hurricane Rita wrecked Port Arthur, Texas.
Then early in January this year, the head of public safety for a city in Texas committed to a purchase order on a Friday only to call back on Monday and cancel it. Without warning, the city’s manager had swept the cash balance from public safety’s capital contingency fund to cover the city’s deficit from the mounting cost of motor fleet fuels.
“I knew then that 2008 would be a different year,” Foster says. And it has been. In the second quarter, a Midwestern state asked for at least a year’s postponement of delivery of 10 vehicles under a $1.5 million contract. Sales fell in the first half of 2008 by 75 percent. They have dwindled further since July.
“Capital account purchases by cities, counties, and states, which are where we find our customers, have been slammed shut,” Foster says.
He knows that many innovative startups must be feeling this economic freeze. He also believes that his customers’ delay of purchases contains a promise that they too are hoping for a thaw. He also has the most valuable thing for any entrepreneur–a product accepted in its market.
“I’m very hopeful that those sales will reappear next year,” he says. It’s an odd place for a rescue business, but right now he’s doing everything he can to hang on.
Source: Foster Rescue, Bruce Foster
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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