Dealer Profile: South Florida Emergency Vehicles

BY BILL ADAMS

Situated next to an eight-acre pond in Fort Meyers, Florida, is South Florida Emergency Vehicles (SFEV), the Florida dealer for Sutphen Corporation.

SFEV is an LLC held by Dave Stonitsch and his wife Vickie. A native of Lockport, Illinois, located about an hour southwest of Chicago. Stonitsch retired to Florida in 2001 to escape the Midwest winters. His journey in the fire service and the apparatus industry and the subsequent development of SFEV make an interesting tale.

DAVE STONITSCH

Stonitsch’s father, a career firefighter at the Argonne National Laboratory in the late 1950s, also served as a volunteer assistant chief at the Lockport Township (IL) Fire Department. When Stonitsch was five years old, he started going with his father to the firehouse. The family later moved to Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and his father became the volunteer chief for the Sunrise Beach (MO) Fire Department. Stonitsch started driving fire trucks when he was 15 and joined the Camdenton (MO) Fire Department as a volunteer in 1978. He was appointed fire chief in 1981 and at that time was the youngest fire chief in Missouri. The Camdenton chief position was volunteer when he became chief. It was an all-volunteer department with an ISO 7 rating and when he retired, career firefighter positions had started, and the department had achieved an ISO 4 rating. He held the position until moving to Florida. Stonitsch was a past president and served on the board of the Missouri Association of Fire Chiefs and has been an associate instructor for the University of Missouri Fire Training Institute.

In 1980, Stonitsch and a partner opened an automotive body shop in Camdenton. He eventually became sole owner. In 1986, the University City (MO) Fire Department asked him to repair a fire truck that had been in an accident. He replied his body shop didn’t repair large trucks. However, Universal City’s fire chief had worked with Stonitsch’s father at Argonne and would not take no for an answer. Stonitsch contacted a friend in town by the name of Steve Bonacker who had a fabrication shop, and together they repaired the rig. They were asked to repair fire trucks over the next four years and eventually built a complete truck from ground up in 1990.

Stonitsch said it went over so well that he and Bonacker formed Precision Fire Apparatus, initially manufacturing apparatus on commercial cabs and chassis. In 1992, a Sutphen sales representative asked if he could sell one of Precision’s rigs because at that time Sutphen really wasn’t into using commercial chassis. That started Stonistch’s relationship with Sutphen. Many Sutphen representatives started selling Precision apparatus as a second line. In the late 1990s, Precision began specializing in rear-mount rescue-pumpers using both Spartan and Sutphen custom chassis. Precision was approached in th