Like much of the world, we’re closely monitoring the ongoing and fast-changing situation regarding COVID-19. With events and essentially every other type of gathering on indefinite hold, now seems like the perfect time to talk about areas of our business that are not just especially relevant, but important to our company’s culture: mobile medical and disaster relief vehicles and operations.

Before getting into how and why we do it, we want to state clearly that we have the capability to quickly upfit and deploy crisis response vehicles based on emergency management needs. In some cases, the vehicles could be ready within weeks. For several clients, we actually maintain custom-built response vehicles and trained crews ready to deploy within hours. And we stand ready to put our expertise and resources to work should state or federal agencies call.

With that said, let’s dig a little deeper.

Experience and preparedness

As a leading experiential and specialty vehicle manufacturer and operator, the role we have always played for our clients has been to answer the question “what if?” We are known for our ability to answer that question with amazing custom experiential vehicles and seamless, reliable operations. But answering “what if?” has also led us to be problem-solvers, troubleshooters, and collaborators, capable of turning on a dime and doing whatever it takes to meet an urgent need.

And while the current coronavirus pandemic is relatively uncharted territory for everyone, our experience has taught us a lot about being prepared.

Back in the days of Hurricane Katrina, we learned a ton from developing and deploying three mobile medical vehicles in a little over a month. We learned how to navigate red tape. We learned that our production methods and business practices were strong enough to handle it.And we learned that when we needed “all hands on deck,” our people were more than up to the challenge.

We also learned that being prepared isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about having the knowledge, skill and ingenuity to adapt and meet challenges head on.


For example, in the aftermath of Katrina, we pulled into a Kmart parking lot full of debris in Waveland, Mississippi. A local cleared the lot using the wind generated by his fanboat. Then one of our team members wired one of our spare generators to the parking lot light towers, turning the lot into a beacon for those needing assistance. Since then, we’ve continued to learn and improve while going to great lengths to serve our clients: from being on call for a major transportation company, even when that call comes on Christmas day; to innovating mobile power stations in order to help an energy provider keep a major city from total darkness; to providing rapidly deployed emergency response teams from Team Rubicon with mobile shower and recovery facilities.

Navigating the road ahead

As we look forward, we are uniquely prepared to develop the vehicles, whether they are mobile medical facilities, mobile emergency command centers or other crisis response vehicles, to support state and local agencies along with nongovernmental organizations and private companies.

Our custom vehicles are designed and built for versatility, sharing certain key chassis and structural underpinnings that make them adaptable to a wide range of uses. We even have several vehicles that are ready to upfit for mobile medical uses. In other words, the same flexibility that makes our specialty vehicles exceptional for roadshows and demonstrations, also makes them ideally suited for this.

Talk with us now about our crisis response options, or to discuss how our specialty vehicles and operations teams can be used to reach out in your communities.