But Sztykiel believes the method to his madness lies in being not a grand innovator but an artful copier -- seeing what the state of the art is in his industry and using the accumulated knowledge and energy of Spartan's work force to take a product to its next logical step. The strategy is known as benchmarking, and for bootstrapping companies like Spartan, it's an efficient form of research and development. "It's simple; we go to a lot of trade shows and talk to a lot of people," says Sztykiel.
At one trade show, Spartan designers started hearing that fire fighters were falling out of fast-moving fire trucks, creating huge liability problems. Spartan introduced the first enclosed cab, which today is the industry standard.
At another trade show, in Europe, Sztykiel saw a fire truck with a cab free of the customary partition between the front and back seats, allowing fire fighters to communicate with one another more easily. "Within three weeks of his getting back from that show, we were tearing our first cab apart," recalls Jim Davidson, head engineer for the fire-truck division. Spartan's "Eurospace" cab set a standard for the industry, and virtually all the company's competitors have since copied it.
When Detroit Diesel created a new engine for the truck market, the Series 60, Sztykiel badgered the company to supply the engine to Spartan. Conventional thinking was that the Series 60, with better fuel efficiency and less pickup, would work for trucks but not emergency vehicles. Few of Spartan's competitors thought that it would try to design a fire truck around the Series 60. But the engine allowed Spartan to design into the chassis two elements critical to fire fighters. Its shape allowed for a roomier cab, and its relatively low "heat rejection" made for a much cooler cab. Since the engine was introduced, in 1990, 40% of the fire trucks Spartan has sold have been powered by the Series 60 engine.
When Allison Transmission of Indianapolis -- a subsidiary of General Motors -- introduced a new electronic automatic transmission, the World Transmission (primarily for the bus market), Sztykiel jumped on it. He got Allison to supply him with some of the first transmissions, and Spartan engineers set about designing a fire-truck chassis, the Metrostar, around it. "We engineered and built that chassis in two and a half months," says chief financial officer Tony Sommer.
In that breakneck project, engineers worked alongside assemblers and debugged the first production chassis as they were being built. "Ninety percent of the problems cropped up when the cab was set on the first chassis," says Sommer. "Then our engineers were all over it on the assembly-plant floor, figuring it out." Davidson estimates that 20% of the engineering on the Metrostar was actually done by assemblers.
The Metrostar, built around the World Transmission, saved Spartan $6,000 on transmission components alone. It also incorporated lighter rails and the same front axle as the company's motor-home chassis, allowing the company to use a smaller engine and buy components in greater quantity. The Metrostar amounted to a custom-designed piece of equipment at a stock price. Custom chassis cost about $70,000. Spartan could offer many of the same features with the Metrostar at $54,000.
"That's an unbelievable price," says Al Morganelli, an independent consultant to the fire-fighting-equipment industry. "George has always been ahead of the curve. He's always known what the next product is or should be. He has the ability to take new components and put them together in an innovative way."
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John Rouser calls Spartan's modus operandi "organized chaos," adding, "George doesn't want his people serving some corporate plan and not the customer. He feels that if you become a slave to the plan, then you cannot do original thinking." Sztykiel refers to that organized chaos with a pithier phrase. "I submit that to achieve unorthodox results you must apply unorthodox methods."
Sztykiel has lived an unorthodox life. He was born in 1929 in Poland, where his family endured the German occupation and then fled the advancing Red Army as the war came to a close. Sztykiel's most vivid boyhood memory is of the mauled German army retreating from the Russian front in the winter of 1941. The Germans, fearing public outcry if they returned too many wounded soldiers to Germany, forced Polish citizens to take them in. Sztykiel's family boarded a 22-year-old private who had lost his toes to frostbite. The soldier said many other German soldiers had suffered a similar fate because their well-made boots fit too tightly, and the hobnails were efficient conductors of the cold. There were tales as well of the German weaponry, well made but not rugged, malfunctioning in the bitter winter weather. Each Russian soldier, meanwhile, carried a can of lard on his belt to heat over a portable stove when he got tired and hungry. He wore loose-fitting mukluks stuffed with straw.
That wartime experience made a strong impression on Sztykiel. Traveling light and living close to the bone have become second nature to him -- and by extension, to his company. Sztykiel says it would be easy for his competitors to overtake Spartan. "All they have to do is give up their big salaries and fancy offices." Until that happens, George Sztykiel will just keep going to trade shows, culling talent from the local high school, and building chassis -- quicker, cheaper, and better.
