April 7, 2025
This CT company builds firefighting vehicles; its new Watertown HQ will accommodate growth, help it escape recurring flooding issues
HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER
Day Palmer and her husband, Craig Palmer, with their son, Craig Palmer Jr. The family owns and manages Watertown-based Gowans-Knight Co., a builder of fire apparatus bodies.
In August 1955, the Steele Brook in Watertown, swollen with runoff from back-to-back hurricanes, overflowed its banks in a raging torrent that caused immense property damage.
In a low-lying industrial area adjacent to the brook, the flood swept away building materials gathered for the construction of a headquarters building for Gowans-Knight Co.
That didn’t deter the Watertown-based employer. After the flood passed, Gowans-Knight proceeded with its construction plans and built a 14,000-square-foot building along what is now called Knight Street.
At the time, the metal fabrication and welding company largely serviced the massive brass factories that once dominated the Naugatuck Valley.
Over the decades, Gowans-Knight evolved into a builder of firefighting vehicle bodies. However, flooding has remained a recurring problem that has repeatedly held up production.
Last year alone, the company had to undertake flood precautions eight times — moving tools and materials onto high tables and shelves, and relocating vehicles off-site, among other efforts — losing a day’s work on each occasion. One storm, in August, flooded its building with about 2 feet of water.
Those headaches will soon be in the rearview mirror.
Gowans-Knight in late December paid $2.5 million for a 35,000-square-foot Watertown manufacturing facility at 50 Seemar Road, which will serve as its new home.
“As I’ve gotten older, I spent many an hour staring at radar screens worrying about flooding,” said 33-year-old Craig Palmer Jr., who is in line to succeed his father, Craig Palmer Sr., as president of Gowans-Knight. “So, for me, this move is a good thing. It’s going to buy some stress relief.”
Gowans-Knight has begun to transfer equipment and operations into the new facility — a move that is expected to be completed by this summer.
The new space, which is more than double the size of its current building, will help prevent future flooding issues, and provide the opportunity for growth and other operational efficiencies, the Palmers said.
More demand
Gowans-Knight over the past five years has grown from 20 to 29 employees. Palmer Sr. said he would hire a half-dozen more fabricators if he could find them.
Work has picked up in recent years, as a result of fire trucks becoming more susceptible to corrosion. The Palmers think it could have something to do with the materials used to de-ice roadways.
The company builds bodies and equipment for three new rescue fire engines or pumping trucks every year. It affixes the bodies — which each take about six months to complete — to chassis and motors bought from other manufacturers.
The company also services about 255 fire vehicles annually.
Its clients are fire departments, mostly located in Connecticut, but also in New York and Massachusetts. The company bids for work against much larger competitors, like Pierce Manufacturing, which makes fire apparatuses in Wisconsin and Florida, or E-One, a global manufacturer headquartered in Florida.
Gowans-Knight has an advantage of being in closer proximity to the departments it services, the Palmers said.
They purchased the new Seemar Road building from Solla Eyelet Products Inc., which ceased production less than a year before the property was sold.
The roughly 28-year-old, masonry-construction industrial building will get about $1 million in upgrades, including HVAC system and roof repairs, new bay doors and a new paint booth able to accommodate a 43-foot-long ladder truck, among other improvements.
The new location will help the company be more efficient and maintain high levels of service for its existing customer base, said Day Palmer, wife to Craig Palmer Sr. and vice president of the company.
As part of the relocation and expansion, the company took out a $2 million loan from Thomaston Savings Bank. The Palmers said they also built up a $1.5 million reserve, which has been dedicated to the purchase and renovation effort.
Stephen Lewis
Stephen L. Lewis, president and CEO of Thomaston Savings Bank, said underwriting for the loan was “straightforward” thanks to Gowans-Knight’s strong track record, solid expansion plan and growth potential in the new location, in addition to the elimination of a flood risk.
“We are proud to partner with Gowans-Knight Co. and look forward to seeing their continued success,” Lewis said.
The Palmers say they are not quite certain what to do with their other building on Knight Street.
They’ve had offers from locals who are aware of the occasional flooding risk. But they prefer to work with town officials to leverage a flood-relief program that would allow the federal government to purchase and demolish the building in the flood-prone area.
Historic roots
Gowans-Knight Co. launched in 1948 in a one-bay garage rented from a car dealership on Watertown’s Main Street.
At the time, the company focused on general metal fabrication and welding, servicing brass factories.
Owners Dave Gowans and Cecile “Bill” Knight officially incorporated the company in 1953.
Their two employees, Clarke Palmer and Tom Alexander, bought into part-ownership early on.
Palmer was a volunteer Watertown firefighter, and, in 1963, he was approached by the Northfield Fire Department to design and fabricate a brush truck — a small firefighting vehicle meant to tackle fires in dense vegetation and rough terrain — on a $2,500 budget.
Word spread from there and more fire departments began asking Gowans-Knight to build bodies for their firefighting vehicles.
That work, and maintenance of fire trucks, became an increasing focus of the business.
HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER
The shop floor of Gowans-Knight’s current Watertown facility at 49 Knight St. The company will be moving to a new headquarters in town, at 50 Seemar Road.
Palmer, in the early 1970s, spearheaded Gowans-Knight’s entry as a dealer for firefighting apparatuses made by Virginia-based Oren Fire Apparatus and Pennsylvania-based Ladder Towers Inc.
Clarke Palmer’s son — Craig Palmer Sr., the current Gowans-Knight president — worked part-time at the company since he was a teen and joined full-time after graduating from Massachusetts’ Becker College in 1980. That’s where he met his future wife, Day.
In 1986, Clarke Palmer and his son bought out the company’s remaining shares, making it exclusively a family enterprise. It also marked the year the company began focusing on the production, sales and servicing of firefighting vehicles and equipment.
It was a good move, as the big Connecticut brass companies that had once formed the backbone of Gowans-Knight’s work disappeared in the second half of the 20th century.
“If we didn’t go into firefighting equipment there would be nothing left,” Palmer Sr. said.
Gowans-Knight began building fire engine bodies from stainless steel in the 1980s — products that have withstood the test of time, Palmer Sr. said.
“Some of those 40-year-old bodies are coming back to us to be refitted to new chassis and repainted,” he said.
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