The History
When David Nichols Sr. started Nichols Fleet Equipment Inc. in 1991, failure wasn’t an option. He had many years of experience building and selling service trucks, and when his employer at the time closed its doors, he had to decide how to best provide for a young family. Wanting to do so in his hometown of Chattanooga, David started NFE, and he hasn’t looked back since.
30 Years of Excellence
In 1991, the company for which David Nichols, Sr. had been a salesman went under, and with three small children at home, he had to make a decision. Knowing little about starting a business, he ventured out on his own and started NFE. From its humble beginnings as a one-man-show, NFE has grown exponentially and has built a nationwide customer base and a proud reputation in the truck equipment industry.
Expansion
In 1997, after several years of leasing and farming out work, NFE moved into a purpose-built Chattanooga facility specifically designed for truck-equipment installations. The facility featured a single overhead crane, drive-through bays and later a paint booth and Line-X bed-liner application area. At the time he broke ground on that project, David thought he was overbuilding, but the years since have seen so much growth for the company that the Service department had to move to a leased facility in nearby St. Elmo. Despite that move, production demand kept increasing, and in 2023, the company’s 32nd year in business, Nichols Fleet broke ground on a brand new facility to more than double its capacity for both new truck production and service.
A Family Business
David Sr. was joined by his two sons, Nick and David “Buzz,” Jr. After graduating from Ole Miss, Buzz joined the NFE team in sales and now oversees the company’s production and service operations. After graduating from Sewanee: The University of the South, Nick taught high school literature for eight years in Texas and Tennessee before joining the NFE team in Office Operations and Marketing. The two now have over 30 years of combined industry experience between them and oversee the bulk of NFE’s daily operations. In their spare time, David and Buzz are avid hunters & outdoorsmen, and Nick is a competitive bicycle racer and musician.
A New Home
To accommodate the growth of the business, NFE opened the doors to the 2805 Riverport Road facility in March of 2024 and immediately saw a huge increase in productivity and efficiency in the shop, but building more trucks was not the only aim of the new building. We set out to build a new standard for upfitting facilities in the truck equipment industry, one that would provide a better experience for both our employees and customers.
Showcasing the NFE Difference
The building lets us showcase the NFE way of building trucks and provides us an incredible opportunity to show our customers, new and existing, the investments we’ve made to better support them and the trucks they buy from us.