WALL MAN DIES, LEAVING A LEGACY, HIS COMPANY
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 01/18/07
BY DENNIS P. CARMODY
ASSISTANT BUSINESS EDITOR
One day last month, Martin "Bud" Smock of Wall was happily talking about his ambulance-building business, PL Custom Emergency Vehicles. Since he purchased it in 1970, it had grown into a $20 million-a-year business, with annual growth rates of 8 percent to 10 percent.
At age 76, he no longer was involved in the day-to-day management. "I've got a very good management team. I have other people to run the organization. I just come in and meddle," he joked.
But he was still very much the guiding force of the business. For example, he was overseeing construction of a 25,000-square-foot addition to his 85,000-square-foot Wall plant. Retire? No, he couldn't do that. He had too much energy and would drive his wife nuts if he stayed home all the time.
Two days later, Smock's heart gave out. Without warning, he was dead. And just as suddenly, his widow and his daughter were left mourning while also having a business to run.
"When I come here, he's not here anymore," said Deborah Smock Thomson, his daughter and vice president of sales and marketing. "But he is here. He's all around us."
PL Custom is a monument to Smock — his funeral was held at the plant, and his coffin was carried in an ambulance driven twice around the exterior of the facility, once in silent tribute, and a second time in a noisy send-off of flashing lights and blaring sirens.
Thomson, along with Smock's widow, Jean, and Robert Stevenson, the company's president, are very much determined to make sure the business stays a living monument, one that continues to provide employment for more than 140 workers.
"We tried to assure everyone from the beginning that we were going forward," said Smock, who was married to her husband for 32 years and who became the sole owner after his death.
PL Custom's current formation owes its origins to Bud Smock's days as a volunteer first-aid worker in Spring Lake. Ambulances back then were low-slung affairs, based on the same Cadillac and Pontiac frames used for hearses.
Obviously, the back was cramped, so it was nearly impossible for a first-aider to provide any care on the drive to the hospital.
"I thought, "We've got to make it easy for people to operate, so that one person in the back is able to reach everything,' " Smock had said in an interview.
By the late 1960s, he was working as an ambulance dealer. He approached the owners of PL Custom, a small business in Brick that worked on servicing ambulances (the name dates to the company's origins in Pompton Lakes), about an idea he had seen. Some new ambulances were being built essentially as a big box placed on top of a truck chassis. He wanted to know if they could work together on building one.
They agreed and soon brought the prototype to a trade show in Atlantic City.
"I was almost laughed out of the building," Smock recalled.
But the laughing didn't last long.
The idea had merit, and as first-aiders received greater training and thus required more equipment, the old ambulance style no longer made sense.
Smock bought out his partners in PL Custom in 1970, and the business has grown ever since. At the Wall facility today, ambulances are built from the ground up. The boxes are framed, equipped and painted there and placed on the back of a truck cab.
It takes about 240 days to get an ambulance out the door from the day the customer first calls, said Robert Stevenson, the company's president. About 100 of those days are spent on production; the rest are devoted to the preliminary work of custom-designing an ambulance to the squad's needs.
Today, about 40 percent to 50 percent of the company's revenue comes from building ambulances, Stevenson said. A sister company, Rescue 1, focuses on building rescue trucks — essentially a toolbox on wheels for the heavy equipment needed for more perilous rescues — and that accounts for about 30 percent of the revenue. The rest comes from the company's service division.
The boxes are guaranteed for life, so if the truck dies, the box can be removed and placed on a new chassis.
The ambulances are not cheap — prices range from $125,000 to $200,000.
"We produce the Mercedes of our industry," Stevenson said.
It's money well-spent, said Michael Bascom, captain of the Shark River Hills First Aid Squad in Neptune and coordinator of emergency medical services for the town and Monmouth County as a whole. His squad purchased the first PL Custom ambulance to roll off the lot, and has purchased many others since then.
"We need the technology in the ambulance not to be outdated as soon as we get it," Bascom said. "(PL Custom) is very forward-thinking."
Bascom also likes the customer service.
"It's like doing business with a small-town guy. They step in the room and treat you like you're their only customer, regardless of the fact they're huge and sell ambulances all over the country," he said.
While Bud Smock's passing leaves heavy hearts among those who loved him, it will not slow down production at PL Custom.
"It wasn't like the next day we were wondering, "What do we do?' " Thomson said. "We knew what to do."
Bud Smock's exacting standards left an impression on his daughter.
"He was a very dynamic leader," she said. "Nothing was ever good enough; the bar was always reset." She said she recognizes that same drive in herself at times.
Jean Smock, who is 11 years younger than her late husband, always understood the day might come when she would have to take over. Although formally retired, she had worked at the business for many years herself, and still was frequently seen in the office, so she felt ready.
"I would just have to come in and fill his shoes as best I can," she said.
The experience has also brought Smock closer to Thomson, her stepdaughter.
"We always affectionately called her the real boss anyway," Thomson joked.
Like her late husband, Smock has no plans to sell the business. But she knows life at the plant will be different now.
"I'm just trying to follow his legacy," Smock said. "Nobody will replace Bud."
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N.J. – PL Custom Emergency Vehicles and Rescue 1 are proud to announce the official groundbreaking for their new 25,000 sq. ft. rescue facility. The building addition will be utilized for expanding rescue production and for further service capabilities.
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