The story
In 1974, Lansing-based Diamond Reo Trucks filed for bankruptcy. The Form-Rite Corporation of Charlotte, Michigan was owed a significant sum by Diamond Reo, which had been Form-Rite's largest client; Form-Rite had supplied fiberglass parts to Reo.
During the bankruptcy hearings, Form-Rite president Charles R. McManamey learned of a significant contract that Reo had just won for custom fire truck chassis. From connections made through the hearing, McManamey was able to draw together the additional talent and knowledge required to build such trucks, and founded Spartan Motors, Inc. as a wholly owned subsidiary of Form-Rite.
During the establishment of Spartan, manufacturing was set up in Form-Rite's 12,000 ft2 (1,100 m2) warehouse in Charlotte; McManamey was named chairman of its board. Kenneth McManamey, former Form-Rite production engineer and supervisor, served as Spartan's manager of operations.
While former Reo vice president of engineering and marketing George Sztykiel became president of the new company, former Reo Reo manager of original equipment manufacturing Ron Partee assumed the role of vice president of sales.
In turn, former Reo director of engineering John Knox was vice president of engineering at the new firm.
Sztykiel, Partee, Knox, and Ken McManamey all donated their time to build the first chassis on speculation. By January 1, 1976, the chassis was completed. Within weeks it had been sold to FMC in Tipton, Indiana and Spartan had 16 custom fire truck cab & chassis orders as well as an order for a one-of-a-kind 140,000 pound GVW coal carrier.
In March 1976, Spartan Motors employed 12 former Reo employees, including Reo's ex–quality control manager Theodore C. Huff, former staff engineer-chassis at Reo Lawrence E. Karkau, and Gerald L. Geary, who had been assistant manager of truck design at Reo. Spartan was spun-off with its own officers and directors that April. Charles McManamey's sons James and Donald also worked for Spartan Motors, as well as several other part-time workers.
The company quickly outgrew the Form-Rite warehouse, and within a few years construction was started for a new facility on Reynolds Road in Charlotte. The McManameys sold their stock in the company and in 1984 Spartan went public, trading on NASDAQ under the symbol “SPAR”.
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Spartan Motors entered the United Kingdom transit bus market in 1995 with the unveiling of its Spartan TX low-floor single-deck bus chassis at Coach & Bus 95, held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England. The Spartan TX, built with an Alusuisse-framed East Lancs Opus 2 body seating 53 passengers to a budget of £82,000 (1995) (equivalent to £160,818.34 or US$205,541.08 in 2024), was designed to be durable while saving manufacturing costs, and was fitted with a rear-mounted Cummins B Series engine, an Allison transmission and an Eaton air suspension. Only two Spartan TX buses were produced, with both being delivered to Barnsley-based Yorkshire Traction by 1996.
In June 2020, Spartan Motors announced its corporate name change to The Shyft Group, Inc. following the divestiture of its Emergency Response (ER) business unit; it began trading on NASDAQ under the symbol "SHYF". In October, Shyft acquired the aluminum truck-body manufacturer F3 MFG Inc. based in Waterville, Maine, with its brands DuraMag and Magnum.
In July 2025, it was announced that the company merged its operations with those of Aebi Schmidt, creating a new entity called the Aebi Schmidt Group.
From Wikipedia’s article on The Shyft Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7