Onalaska v. REV Group: Fire Truck Antitrust Lawsuit and MDL

The City of Onalaska, Wisconsin, is a plaintiff in the Onalaska fire truck antitrust lawsuit, City of Onalaska v. Oshkosh Corporation, et al. (Case No. 1:25-cv-01717), which accuses the country’s three largest fire apparatus manufacturers of conspiring to raise prices and restrict supply. The case has been folded into In re: Fire Apparatus Antitrust Litigation, MDL No. 3179, before Senior District Judge William C. Griesbach in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. As of June 2026, the consolidated litigation is in early pretrial stages, with no rulings yet on motions to dismiss, class certification, or settlement.

Who Onalaska Is Suing

The complaint targets the three manufacturer groups that plaintiffs say control 70 to 80 percent of the roughly $3 billion annual U.S. fire truck market, along with a private equity backer and the industry’s trade association.¹ The named defendants are:

REV Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries E-One, Ferrara Fire Apparatus, KME, Spartan Fire, and Smeal, together with private equity firm American Industrial Partners and related fund entities.
Oshkosh Corporation and its subsidiary Pierce Manufacturing, plus Boise Mobile Equipment and Maxi-Metal.
Rosenbauer America, LLC and affiliated Rosenbauer entities.
The Fire Apparatus Manufacturers’ Association (FAMA).

What the Complaint Alleges

The plaintiffs allege that starting no later than January 2016, the manufacturers conspired to fix, raise, and stabilize fire truck prices while deliberately holding back production. According to the complaints, the scheme has three main pieces: suppress supply to keep order backlogs high, write “floating” price terms into contracts that let manufacturers raise prices after an order is placed, and use FAMA to swap confidential business data so each company can verify the others are holding the line rather than competing.¹

FAMA is described as the coordination mechanism. Plaintiffs say the association ran biannual meetings with “purchasing roundtables” and closed-door sessions where competing manufacturers shared nonpublic information on pricing, capacity, demand, and sales strategy in what the complaints call a “give-to-get” exchange. FAMA reportedly collected the data, sent it to an outside consulting firm for compilation, and circulated the resulting reports only to its 55 manufacturer members. Fire departments and other buyers had no access.¹²

The complaints also trace a years-long acquisition spree that they say left too few competitors to sustain a real market. REV Group, backed by American Industrial Partners, allegedly acquired nearly a dozen independent manufacturers between 2006 and 2020, including KME (2016), Ferrara (2017), Spartan and Smeal (2019), and Ladder Tower (2020). Oshkosh’s Pierce subsidiary acquired Boise Mobile Equipment in 2021 and Canadian manufacturer Maxi-Metal in 2022. After consolidating, plaintiffs say, the manufacturers adopted “center-led” strategies that eliminated geographic overlap among their subsidiary brands and dealer networks, further reducing competitive pressure.¹

The Prices and Wait Times at Issue

According to the consolidated complaint, fire truck prices have roughly doubled over the past decade. Standard pumper trucks that cost about $500,000 in the mid-2010s now run approximately $1 million, and ladder trucks have climbed from around $900,000 to over $2 million.³ One investigative report found that manufacturer profit margins, once roughly 4 to 5 percent, have tripled to above 13 percent.⁴

Delivery waits have grown alongside prices. Fire departments once waited roughly 18 months for a custom truck; some are now waiting four years or more.⁵ REV Group reported a record $4.2 billion backlog by fiscal year 2024, and Oshkosh reported a $5.3 billion global backlog the same year.⁶ Milwaukee’s complaint offers a concrete snapshot of the trajectory: the city paid $530,049 per Pierce fire engine in 2014 and $1,104,400 per REV E-One engine by January 2025, with several of those newer trucks still undelivered when the case was filed.¹

How Onalaska Fits Into the MDL

On April 3, 2026, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation granted a motion to centralize the related fire apparatus antitrust cases before Judge Griesbach. The transfer order initially covered twelve actions in three federal districts, and seven more related actions were later identified, bringing the total to at least nineteen cases. Onalaska’s case appears on Schedule A of that transfer order and was formally moved into the MDL.⁷

In March 2026, a consolidated amended complaint was filed on behalf of Onalaska along with the cities of La Crosse, Ann Arbor, and Milwaukee.³⁸⁹¹⁰

Government Investigations Running Alongside

The private lawsuits are moving in parallel with government scrutiny. On September 10, 2025, the Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census held a hearing titled “Sounding the Alarm: America’s Fire Apparatus Crisis,” chaired by Sen. Josh Hawley, where executives from Pierce and REV Group were pressed on whether large backlogs were a deliberate strategy to protect margins.¹¹ On February 13, 2026, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into REV Group, Oshkosh, and Rosenbauer and issued Civil Investigative Demands requiring the companies to produce documents about their business practices.¹² The Federal Trade Commission has also opened its own investigation.⁵

What the Manufacturers Say

REV Group and Pierce Manufacturing have publicly denied wrongdoing. Both companies attribute the sharp rise in prices and extended waits to post-pandemic supply chain disruptions, inflation, labor shortages, and unusually high demand rather than any coordinated scheme.³² At the Senate hearing, Pierce VP Dan Meyer testified that Pierce had not acquired any U.S.-based fire truck manufacturers and that lead times reflected pandemic-era demand spikes, adding that Pierce had recently shipped more trucks in a single quarter than at any point in its history. REV Group Specialty Vehicles Group President Mike Virnig testified that REV’s acquisitions were aimed at saving financially distressed companies.¹¹ It was the defendants who first moved the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in January 2026 to centralize the cases, though they had proposed the Northern District of Illinois rather than the Eastern District of Wisconsin.¹³ FAMA had not publicly responded to the allegations as of mid-2026.

Where the Case Stands

MDL 3179 remains in early pretrial stages before Judge Griesbach, with the most recent docket activity recorded on June 10, 2026. No rulings on motions to dismiss, class certification, or settlement have been reported.¹³

1
Courthouse News Service. City of Milwaukee Class Action Complaint
2
International Association of Fire Fighters. Fire Apparatus Crisis Sparks Investigations, Lawsuits Over Soaring Prices and Delays
3
Wisconsin Public Radio. Antitrust Suits Fire Truck Manufacturers Centralized Wisconsin Federal Court
4
InvestigateTV. Burnout: Fire Truck Shortage Risking Lives Nationwide
5
International Association of Fire Fighters. What to Know About the Fire Truck Crisis
6
Scribd. Letter to FTC and DOJ Re: Firetrucks
7
U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. MDL-3179 Transfer Order
8
Saveri Law Firm. Firetruck Manufacturing Antitrust Litigation
9
LA County. LA County Brings Antitrust Suit Against Fire Truck Companies
10
Law.com. Fired Up Over Leadership: Baron and Budd Accused of Soliciting Class Members in Fire Apparatus Antitrust Cases
11
FireRescue1. Apparatus Manufacturers on Defense at Senate Hearing
12
Texas Attorney General. Attorney General Ken Paxton Investigates Firetruck Manufacturers
13
CourtListener. In Re: Fire Apparatus Antitrust Litigation