Maybe it's the nature of the trade, or just the nature of the age, but at Dunbar Armored daily life is defined simply: It's a battle between the "good guys" and the "bad guys."
For Mike Gambrill, former chief of police in Baltimore County and now senior vice president of operations at the Hunt Valley armored car company, a recent shooting at an Owings Mills bank of a would-be robber by a Dunbar Armored employee epitomizes the company's daily struggle.
"We have what everyone wants: money," he explains.
For the largest privately held armored car company in the nation and the primary deliverer of new U.S. currency to Federal Reserve banks and branches, the existence of the "bad guys" has fueled the expansion of a one-man, one-truck operation to a multimillion-dollar business. The company has opened three branches this year (and will open three more this fall) and, with the Aug. 1 acquisition of competitor Loomis, Fargo & Company's Miami Air Courier Operations, has entered the international arena.
The company has 810 armored trucks, employs 3,500 in 78 locations from Baltimore to Los Angeles, and ships several billion dollars in money and valuables daily.
On Aug. 31, Dunbar Armored, the largest of the six Dunbar divisions, ended its fiscal year with gross revenue of $147 million, up 19 percent from $124 million in fiscal 1998, according to Frederick A. Aus, vice chairman and president.
The company draws on a family history of more than 75 years in the armored transportation business.
Fate or ingenuity first got the Dunbar family into the business in 1923. George Dunbar founded Mercer & Dunbar Armored Car Service, the first armored car company in New England, after an armored truck broke down at the car dealership in Hartford, Conn., where he and partner Floyd Mercer worked.
In 1956, it was George Dunbar's youngest son, James, then 27, who brought the family trade to Baltimore after a disagreement with his father.
"Every time I went to my father to suggest things, he'd say that's not the way things are done. I decided I'd go off on my own and start my own company," Dunbar said while vacationing at his summer home in Connecticut recently.
After studying the demographics of major cities on the East Coast, he decided on coming here.
"I looked around the country for a city that didn't have much competition, and I thought Baltimore looked like a good community," he said.
