Profiting from the emergency services crisis
From fire trucks to 911 calls, rising costs and new tech are changing how cities respond to emergencies—including who benefits.
Welcome back readers! The rising cost of, well, EVERYTHING has been the topic of a lot of news stories and general griping lately (present company included). I hope to address the many public policy connections for various industries and governments, and first up is emergency services.
A set of stories about the supply and demand problems in the industry caught my eye this weekend and they all had one thing in common: private profit.
“We love backlogs”
For governments, backlog = bad. Whether its infrastructure or paying service providers, backlogs signal that those running the show face difficulties related to spending, management, or both.
But if you are a private equity firm that has cornered a large percentage of the market for emergency services vehicle manufacturing, backlogs mean profit.
That is one of the startling—and disturbing—takeaways from this well-researched and reported piece by Matt Stoller and Dan Geller on what’s behind the rising cost of emergency services vehicles:
In 2025, REV Group reported almost $4.4 billion in unfulfilled fire truck and ambulance orders in their investor materials as a “highlight.” While executives have tried to blame delays on semiconductor shortages and limited chassis supply, REV Group has touted its extreme backlog as a way to increase shareholder value because it “enables strong visibility into future net sales.” And, indeed, the company’s stock price increased 640 percent in the last five years.
Read the full story
As investors pocket the profits, local government emergency responders have to figure out how to afford the price spike for a critical infrastructure upgrade while also maintaining their older ambulance for two years longer. And even when governments find alternatives, they’re still paying more for the pleasure.
The authors note that some places are opting to only replace the ambulance body (or chassis) because that’s where most of the new bells and whistles are located and doing so saves time and money: Instead of paying $445,000 and waiting two years for a new ambulance, Coalinga, California saved $200,000 by only replacing the chassis to ensure that the ambulance could be back in service within eight months.
But Stoller and Geller add that equally skyrocketing prices for chasses takes some of the shine out of those cost savings. “Just five years ago,” they wrote, “Spartanburg, South Carolina replaced its chassis for less than half what it cost Coalinga to do so in 2025.” These pricing dynamics, they warn, are a clear divergence from a history or relative stability:
Record wait times, backlogs, and price increases were not inevitable. Modern ambulances have been manufactured for more than a century. Up through the first decade of this century, delivery times remained stable in the 120-day range, and price increases were modest. The change in market structure removed any notion of cost or delivery certainty, leaving towns and cities across the country with no choice but to pay an ever-increasing premium for a vehicle that will most likely only be ready years in the future.
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In a recent Congressional hearing that focused on these same issues for fire department, firefighters and antitrust experts said fire truck prices have doubled—from about $500,000 to $1 million—while wait times have stretched from under a year to as long as four years.
Basel Musharbash, an antitrust attorney, blamed a monopoly-like market for soaring costs and dangerous delays. “This is what a highly concentrated market looks like—prices rise, quality and service decline, and customers have nowhere else to turn,” he said.
But manufacturers argued the crisis stems from market disruptions. “The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and component delays that significantly impacted our ability to produce fire apparatus,” said Mike Virnig, president of the REV Group. “At the same time, we experienced a dramatic surge in orders.”
AI to the ‘rescue’?
When prices go up without an increase in revenue, cuts have to come from somewhere. Staffing at local emergency call centers has long been a problem, but the recent budget pressures amid rising capital costs are exacerbating the issue.
Some localities are turning to AI for emergency response help—not to replace dispatchers, but to offload lower-value tasks, speed up call handling, and stretch limited staff further.
Real-time translation in Sumter County, Fla: AI converts calls into live transcripts and translates languages instantly for dispatchers, saving around 70 seconds of the typical wait for a translator.
Quality control in Long Beach, Calif: AI reviews automatically reviews all 911 calls for tone, professionalism, and decision-making, and flags calls needing supervisor review. Previously this was done by hand on a small, random sample.
Rush hour overload in New Orleans: One traffic incident can lead to multiple calls for the same event, creating longer wait times that for callers with a separate critical event. The city now routes anyone calling 911 within a 200-meter radius of a live accident to an AI agent, who asks if the caller is reporting the wreck. If they are, the AI agent assures them it’s being handled; if they say no, the caller is connected to a human.
At the same time, a growing wave of tech companies—and their investors—are moving aggressively into this space, pitching AI as the solution to strained emergency systems. Startups like Prepared and Aurelian have raised tens of millions in venture capital with Prepared alone bringing in roughly $80 million in recent funding rounds.
Established players are also getting involved. Motorola Solutions has acquired AI firms and rolled out new products aimed specifically at easing 911 staffing shortages. Axon—already dominant in police body cameras—has moved to acquire Prepared as part of a broader push into real-time emergency response technology.
None of this is inherently problematic—many of these tools appear to be delivering real efficiency gains. But the influx of venture capital is a glaring signal that, just like the vehicle side of emergency services, private markets view this as a capital opportunity.
In other words, as cities turn to AI to manage one set of budget and staffing pressures, they may be opening the door to a dynamic they’re already grappling with elsewhere: how to balance innovation and efficiency with long-term cost control and public accountability.