Beyond the Transaction: Building True Partnerships in Apparatus Purchasing

So what I wanted to talk about today actually stems from an association meeting that I went to just a week ago.

It's the PHMSA annual meeting.

And one of the things that we talked about on a panel that I moderated was was how, well, actually, we talked about being a partner more than a customer.

And it was actually Chief Malone from the Indianapolis Fire Department who brought that up.

He told the vendors that we were speaking to, he goes, I want to be your partner.

I don't want to be your customer.

And that really resonated with me, but it also kind of reminded me of the relationships that you have developed over the years with different manufacturers, with different component manufacturers.

I wanted to get your feel on that and kind of maybe get some advice for folks and things of that.

So to get us rolling, you've obviously, and we've talked about it, you've obviously got a good relationship with your chosen apparatus builder.

Almost to the point where, you know, I mean, you probably walked through the door.

You're probably, this might be dating myself, but you're probably like Norm, you know, from Cheers.

Ricky walks in and everybody's, Ricky, you

know.

But anyway, so you've got a very good relationship.

You can almost be, you know, informal with them.

You're familiar with the engineers.

You can probably just, you probably got them in your cell phone.

How do you get to that point? We're going to talk, you know, for those who don't go with the same builder every time, we're going to talk about that in a little bit.

So I'm not forgetting that.

But for your situation, how did that have, how does that, how do you develop that type of relationship where really, truly with your chosen builder, you're a partner and you have those same kind of relationships with some of your component suppliers as well?