Bin there, done that

UK success story Dennis Eagle has seen it all. FELIX PAGE tours its HQ

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Whenever we say to people we work at Dennis Eagle, they say: 'Dennis? Oh, the fire engines.'

As reputations go, you could do worse than be associated with producing emergency response vehicles, but if you haven't actually had anything to do with them for more than two decades, and have since become a market leader in quite another area, the misconception is probably a bit frustrating.

"It wasn't us that manufactured the fire engine. We manufactured the cabin at our plant in Blackpool, yes, but it was in 2004 they stopped manufacturing it," explains the company's managing director, Keith Day. "We've got thousands of these driving around the streets now that seem to be invisible," he says, gesturing out of the window of the firm's Warwickshire factory at the ranks of gleaming new bin lorries awaiting delivery to their new owners.

Dennis Eagle, like all the very best automotive-adjacent institutions (cough), was started in 1895, originally as Dennis Brothers, a maker of lawnmowers and bikes that later branched out into building chassis for a wide range of commercial vehicles, including – you guessed it – fire engines. Today's company was formed in the mid-1980s when Dennis merged with vehicle body manufacturer Eagle Engineering and opened a factory in Leamington Spa, which over the past four decades has grown to become one of the country's most important vehicle plants.