Pierce Manufacturing is a U.S. company based in Appleton, Wisconsin that manufactures customized fire and rescue apparatus and a wholly owned subsidiary of Oshkosh Corporation. Pierce was acquired by Oshkosh in 1996 and is currently the largest fire apparatus company in the US. The company was founded in 1913 by Humphrey Pierce and his son Dudley as the Pierce Auto Body Works Inc., and concentrated on building custom truck bodies for the Ford Model T. The first production facility was designed in 1917 and enlarged in 1918 by architect Wallace W. DeLong. From the 1960s to the early 1980s, Pierce was primarily known for building custom bodies on commercial and other manufacturer's custom chassis, and was considered an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).