Talk:Collins Industries

Collins Bus Corporation

I'm suggesting moving this into a separate article, as this article really deals with the parent company and each of the other two school bus manufacturers have their own dedicated articles that are off to a reasonably good start. --SteveCof00 (talk) 23:46, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Another reason

It looks like parent company Allied Specialty Vehicles is largely a duplicate of this page, in terms of content, as well as format. --SteveCof00^{My Suggestion box is open} 10:25, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

This is a Out of Date Article

I have a serious thing that needs to be pointed out, and that this Article is so out-of-date, I actually have concerns that this article could be deleted off of Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is a "Free Encyclopedia" with limitation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EditorTheInvertedFan (talk • contribs) 03:12, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

@EditorTheInvertedFan: If you have more up to date information, or care to locate it, feel free to update the article. General Ization ^Talk 03:16, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

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Format of article content

When reading this article and then clicking the link to company website to read more about things, there is a big issue here that needs attention. Although titled about one company, the content in this article seems to make it seem about it being a segment of another, larger company. I'm thinking that some research and writing may have to be done, but from what it looks like, the Collins Industries page has much of the content that needs to be on the article for REV Group. In the end, both articles need some TLC (with this one needing more). --SteveCof00 (talk) 10:20, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Oppose the merge on the grounds that while REV group in the owned, Collins seems to be selling the vehicles and so it seems to be actively used brand. My view is that someone is more likely to look for a 'Collins' bus than a 'REV' bus, and hence the products should stay on the Collins page. Klbrain (talk) 15:18, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I updated the tag to be a bit more specific in what I was trying to explain on here. From what I can tell (through each company website), Collins only sells buses (among all the listed vehicles in the article), with the parent company retaining ownership of the manufacturers listed on this article (this was created 8 years before the article about its parent manufacturer). --SteveCof00 (talk) 20:28, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

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Error in Collins Industries History

The text says that Collins bought Wheeled Coach Corporation in the 1980s, this is correct, but says that Wheeled Coach was the INVENTOR of the "Modular Ambulance', this is an outright falsehood. Wheeled Coach built their FIRST Modular Amblance DECADES after the several originators of these units had been building Modular Ambulances for many years.

The best known of the early MODULAR AMBULANCE MANUFACTURERS, was Swab Wagon Company, of Elizabethville, PA. This company was founded building Horse Drawn Wagons, and is still FAMILY Owned, still producing a variety of EMERGENCY VEHICLES, noticibly Rescue Trucks, Mobile Command Vehicles, Paramedic Response Trucks, and does Fire Apparatus Remanufacturing, Refurbishing and superb workmanship. They built some of the first Modular Ambulances to gain National Attention in the Developing EMS Field, back in the 60's for the highly innnovative Capt. John Waters, USCG, Ret. who ran the Ambulance Program for Jacksonville, Florida.

Houston, Tx planned to purchase a fleet of those, and local Funeral Car and Ambulance Distributor, (Gordon K. Allen, for Superior Coach, America's Largest Ambulance, Funeral Car and Bus Manufacturer of Lima, Ohio,), who also built his own line of Suburban Carryall based Ambulances, decided to form MODULAR AMBULANCE CORPORATION, to take that contract, as Superior wasn't interested in that line at that time.

(Superior wouldn't offer a Modular for years yet to come, and when they did, it was very poorly received), and that MODULANCE Line became the FIRST Modular seen by the  bulk of the American Public and the Fire, EMS industry, as Modulance, as it was called, advertised nationally, and built a nationwide dealer organization, and became a large part of the industry in a few years, sales driven by FEDERAL Matching Funds to improve and upgrade local EMS Services.

A number of Modular type ambulances were built in WWII on a PACKARD Funeral Car/Ambuance Professional Car Chassis, by Henney Body Company, the preferred and exclusive Packard Professional Car Chassis builder. A few one-off, almost, Cadillac style Modulars were built on Cadillac Professional Car Chassis by some of the five approved Professional Car Builders for the occastional Fire Dept type Rescue Squad departments who wanted such roomy units.

I have history books and photos of many of these in my files.

I built my first MODULAR Ambulances at my own Ambulance Factory, Safety Equipment Corporation in El Dorado, KS, back in the early 1970's on ALL ALUMINUM Bodies supplied by Bob Wormser, an Aluminum EXTRUDED Playground Equipment Manufacturer, who also ran a Volunteer Rescue Squad in Ocala and had bought some of my HiTop Suburban Ambulances in the late 60's and had become a good friend. He had the necessary extrusions, very expensive to tool and obtain in those days before CAD Systems, and in a day when the dies for extrusions had to be made laborously by highly skilled extrusion die builders.

Swab Wagon used Commercial Truck Body type Construction for their Modular Bodies. (Steel Tubing, welded into a cage style framework, and ALUMINUM skin pop rivited to the Steel Framework. Strong, for sure, BUT, Electolytic Corrosion between the rivited MIXED METALS, led to ELECTROLYSIS, and a "white rust" in the Aluminum Skins where road salt and other chemical reactions took place, and the bodies just rotted away in place after a few years, especially in the Northern States, where Road Salt is an obsession in the WInters.

When the Electrolysis problem started plaguing the Industry's users, some companies came out with STEEL Bodies, too heavy for a 1-Ton Chassis, (Superior, for Example), while others copied our and other ALL Welded Aluminum Body Builders.

Another early MODULAR Ambulance Builder was the GERSTENSLAGER Corp in Wooster, Ohio, a major Heavy Manufacturer for decades before Wheeled Coach ever existed. Their bodies were very heavy, so generally built on MEDIUM DUTY Chassis, (Ton and a Half), and were really larger than Swab and later Modulance Units. Much history and historical Photographs exist to substantiate this history. In all do respect, Mr. Don Collins, Sr. was a defrocked Assembly of God Preacher from Oklahoma City, who got in trouble running a megachurch there, messed with his secretary, and just like Jim Bakker years later, got tossed out of his pastorate. He emerged in Kansas City, went to work for the Local Wayne Bus Sales Dealer in Kansas City, got a Power of Attorney from the aged owner, and took out used School Buses, and traveled till he found a Church to buy it and start a Bus Ministry, then signed over the title to them right on the spot, and went back to the dealership, check in hand.

One day, the OWNER of Wayne Bus Sales of Kansas CIty, came to work and found himself locked out of his own dealership. Mr Collins had signed the Company over to himself, and was now runnning it, introducing a mini-bus on a van AND an Ambulance on a 69 Ford forward engine van, the first practical van to make an ambulance, without an engine back in the way of where you wanted to put a stretcher. He copied Wayne Works OWN drawings, brought it to market, ran his floor plan with Wayne Sales Financial up to the limit, closed overnight in Kansas City and opened up in an old WW2 Wooden Hanger at South Hutchinson, Kansas going in against Wayne, with WAYNE"S OWN MONEY!

True, he did a lot of things, but he was never careful with the truth. I was 50 miles away in El Dorado, Kansas, building Ambulances, and he tried to force us to sell out to him for years, and was none too polite at times in doing so. He and I always talked cordially at National Conventions, visited each other's exhibits, but his underlings were tooth and nail competitors. I moved my entire operation to an available empty RV Factory in Indiana, primarily to be closer to our main Customers and Dealers, and to GET AWAY the constant bitter competition just under the surface, 24/7.

I am now 75, this fall, and at last ready to tell those true stories since the bad actors are all passed on. If asked, I will correct errors in history whereever I can. REV Corp is, by all accounts, a great Company. I doubt they would want such false stories in their Corporate History Documents.

IF you have any other questions, please write or call. I am back living in El Dorado, my home town, and 'home to stay' as they say. I have some History Articles and Books on the Drawing Board -- The Professional Car Society, is a wealth of information on Professional Car and Ambulance history. Collins doesn't like to be reminded of it, but he ALSO came out with a line of FUNERAL COACHES and LIMOUSINES in the 1980's, again taking a swipe at WAYNE his former supplier and mentor, it was a disaster. Even the leading Funeral Home in Hutchinson couldn't bear the thought of buying such a poor excuse of a Professional Car Fleet. When I sold them a fleet of our Toronto Built EUREKA Professional Cars in 1982, Collins all but declared war. I had been planning a move East for several years, so in 1984, I moved to Indiana, leaving a dealership/distributorship in Kansas to sell out lines there. It's still here, and now we are back home from back East, ourselves.

Thanks for reading this, hope it interests someone. 98.186.200.226 (talk) 00:22, 30 August 2021 (UTC)