Morgan Olson is an American manufacturer of walk-in delivery stepvans located in Sturgis, Michigan. Many depts. have used said vans for a variety of uses, such as rescue trucks, rehab units, water & dive rescue vehicles, utility vehicles, air-supply units, equipment carriers, and more. Morgan Olson is the direct successor to the Grumman Olson company, having merged in 2003.
Morgan Olson's parent company, JBPCO, also operates a similar division called Morgan Truck Bodies. MTB is a major manufacturer of box trucks in the US, many of which are also used by fire & EMS depts. for the same uses.
History[]
The Morgan side of the company was founded in 1952 by Elton Mountz in Morgantown, PA and the Olson side by Jimmy Olson and Walter Heingartner in 1946 in Brooklyn, NY. Mountz ran a welding shop, and Olson was the New York State Liquor commissioner. Olson partnered with Heingartner, a local Chevrolet dealer, to sell vans to local laundry companies. Olson & Heingartner also teamed up with Jake Swirbul, one of the founders of Grumman Aircraft Engineering (the same company that later expanded into the fire apparatus market themselves) to help produce the vehicles. The working relationship between the two companies eventually formalized, turning into Grumman Olson, a name they would use for the next several decades. The merger came in 2003, when Northrop Grumman sold Grumman Olson to JB Poindexter & Co. (who already owned the Morgan Corp); and the name change to Morgan Olson followed.
In 2018, Morgan Truck Body LLC and its subsidiary, Morgan Canada Corporation (together North America’s largest manufacturers of light-duty and medium-duty truck bodies), acquired Multivans Inc. located in Bolton, Ontario. Multivans will continue to operate as a separate entity as Morgan–Multivans Canada Corporation.
Multivans, Inc. is the largest commercial truck body manufacturer in Canada.