Spartan Emergency Response

Spartan Emergency Rescue Vehicles, or Spartan ERV, is a fire apparatus manufacturer located in Brandon, South Dakota, with additional manufacturing facilities in Ephrata, Pennsylvania and Ocala, Florida.

Spartan Motors
Spartan Motors was formed in Charlotte, Michigan in 1976 by four engineers from the bankrupt Diamond-REO truck company. Spartan designed and manufactured a custom cabover chassis for fire services. Like Duplex, Hendrickson, Oshkosh and Pemfab, Spartan supplied chassis to apparatus body manufacturers - this market niche falls between custom apparatus built entirely by apparatus manufacturers (like Pierce or E-One) and commercial chassis rigs like Ford, Freightliner or GMC. Unlike their specialty competitors, Spartan would build chassis to end-user specifications, enabling smaller body manufacturers to offer a custom apparatus option. The Spartan chassis was popular, and apparatus manufacturers throughout North America offered (and continue to offer) Spartan-chassis apparatus.

In the 1980s, Spartan also began to build custom chassis for motor homes.

Early models included the CFC, CFG and CFH chassis. The Gladiator was introduced in 1983 and continues to be one of Spartan's most popular models. Other models introduced in the 1980s and 1990s included the Diamond, the Monarch, the rear-engine Silent Knight and the GT-One. The Metro Star and Advantage were introduced in the latter part of the 1990s and the Metro Star remains in production today.

Fire body manufacturing
In 1997, Spartan entered the apparatus body side of the industry through its acquisition of Luverne Fire Apparatus of Brandon, South Dakota and Quality Manufacturing of Talladega, Alabama. Initially, the two facilities continued to operate as subsidiaries under their original names, but were merged in 2003 to form Crimson Fire. Spartan also acquired Road Rescue Inc., an ambulance manufacturer in St. Paul, Minnesota. Road Rescue was later sold to Allied Specialty Vehicles. In 2011, Spartan acquired Classic Fire of Ocala.

In 2012, Spartan rebranded Crimson as Spartan ERV.

Products
Spartan ERV sells a full line of pumpers, aerial devices, tankers, rescues and brush trucks on custom Spartan and commercial chassis.