
Fred Gerling, Father of the Expando Chassis, Dies at 79 His commitment to next-generation design helped transform truck operations By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 10, 2024 - 11:11 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Fred Gerling, creator of the expanding production truck and founder/president of Gerling & Associates, died Dec. 7 at the age of 79. A memorial service will be held on Jan. 25, 2025, at 2:00-4:00 p.m. at Snyder Funeral Homes, Lasater Chapel, 11337 Upper Gilchrest Rd., Mount Vernon, OH 43050.
Fred Gerling, here at the 2016 NAB Show, was a constant presence in the outdoor exhibit area for decades.
Nearly every production-truck company in the U.S. tapped into Gerling's team as his commitment to innovation and his excellent trailers and chassis transformed the business and allowed engineers and staff at the nation's leading vendors to focus on the technical equipment and infrastructure. The chassis was designed to be light and flexible, allowing truly innovative workspaces and next-generation technology to be deployed with ease by such companies as NEP, Game Creek Video, and Mobile TV Group.
We have been very blessed, Gerling told SVG in 2012. We're delivering an average two projects every week, and, when you're doing that high volume and you're working with the greatest engineers in the world, they come in with these great ideas, and they challenge you. The gift of having that quality of people affiliate with your company is priceless. They come in and say, You know, if we did this, it would be a little bit better.' It's really remarkable. We challenge each other, and that makes everyone better.
Gerling's talent for sales and entrepreneurship led him to a career in the broadcast-television-equipment industry. In the early 1970s, he worked for Jimmy Rea Electronics and, in 1988, founded Gerling & Associates in Sunbury, OH. He began with just six employees in a small, rented space, and, through his dedication and leadership, the company grew to become the leader in manufacturing television-production vehicles across North America and beyond. His wife and, eventually, three of his children grew the company into a monumental success, which included an expansive manufacturing plant where mobile facilities for television production and mobile command centers were born, assembled, and eventually hit the road.
Gerling took immense pride in building an independently owned, family-run business, a legacy that continues under the leadership of CEO Jennifer Fenton; Director, Sales, Shannon Gerling; and new Treasurer BJ Gerling. For over a decade, his daughters have been at the helm of Gerling & Associates, ensuring that Fred Gerling's vision endures.
Born in 1945, Gerling grew up as one of four children on Buckeye Lake, OH. He developed a love for water activities early on, excelling at water skiing and ice skating during his youth. Married in 1974, Gerling and his wife, BJ, spent many years farming their land and shared a passion for travel and adventure, particularly annual family skiing trips to the Rocky Mountains. He took up flying in the 1970s and, an experienced pilot, continued to fly complex aircraft until the age of 77.
He is survived by his wife, BJ; children Christopher DeVol, Shannon Gerling, Jennifer (Dusty) Fenton, Molly Krownapple, and John Paul Gerling; and nine grandchildren.
Pat Sullivan, Game Creek Video, founder and president, says Gerling was an important, and unique, figure in the sports broadcasting industry.
He perfected the expanding side production trailer which has made the larger productions that we do possible, says Sullivan. Gerling and Associates built 93 trailers for Game Creek Video and each one has been an improvement on the prior unit. Unlike many manufacturers, G&A improved their workmanship instead of cutting corners to shave costs. In large measure, that has been the result of Fred's willingness to listen and BJ, Jennifer, and Shannon's management of the company over the last few years. We are grateful for that and we are confident that it will continue. We will miss Fred but every time a new Gerling and Associates mobile unit arrives at Game Creek I will smile and remember the good times we had together.
Condolence messages can be sent to [email protected].
North America Stories
18/11/2025
KEIZER, Ore. Municipal broadcaster Keizer City Television, K23 TV, has deployed four Telycam PTZ cameras to upgrade the visual quality of its live meeting cover...
18/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. NBC Sports and Peacock have announced that they are working for the second consecutive year with the National Football League, EA Sports and Gen...
18/11/2025
LONDON A new Ampere Analysis study finds that familiar franchises are successfully driving kids' TV consumption on Netflix and that the streamers big bet on...
18/11/2025
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. TV viewers continue to find it challenging to find relevant programs in the fragmented universe of streaming content, according to new findings...
18/11/2025
20 Bob Dylan Songs That Reflect a Legacy of A-Changin On the heels of Bob Dylan receiving a Berklee honorary doctorate, we take stock of one of the most singu...
17/11/2025
EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast to Return Thanksgiving Night With Immersive, Data-Driv...
17/11/2025
Behind the Broadcast Booth: Impact Ventures' Greer Christian on Building Her...
17/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Sportradar's Brian Josephs Talks Peacock's Powerful Perfor...
17/11/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Greg Gumbel, Iconic Voice and Comforting ...
17/11/2025
ESPN, Pixar, the NFL, and Beyond Sports Team Up for ESPN's Dec. 8 Monsters,...
17/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: EA SPORTS' Evan Dexter on How the EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast...
17/11/2025
Dealmaking for broadcast stations continues to heat up, with Sinclair reporting it has built up a 8.2% stake in E.W. Scripps and has been talking with Scripps f...
17/11/2025
The worlds online population grew by more than 240 million people in 2025, according to Facts and Figures 2025 released today by the International Telecommunica...
17/11/2025
ASB GlassFloor, the leading provider in LED sports flooring, today announced the opening of Athletes Lab 2.0, a premier athletic training facility designed to e...
17/11/2025
SmallHD today announced the release of its popular Camera Control for Canon cinema cameras. This new integration enables filmmakers to adjust critical camera se...
17/11/2025
Luxury is in the details, and no one captures that better than the creative team at Samuel & Sons. As the visionaries behind iconic photography and advertising ...
17/11/2025
NVIDIA Apollo - a family of open models for accelerating industrial and computat...
17/11/2025
To power future technologies including liquid-cooled data centers, high-resoluti...
17/11/2025
At SC25, NVIDIA unveiled advances across NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, next-generation networking, quantum computing, national research, AI physics and more - as accel...
17/11/2025
Across quantum physics, digital biology and climate research, the world's researchers are harnessing a universal scientific instrument to chart new frontier...
17/11/2025
It used to be that computing power trickled down from hulking supercomputers to ...
16/11/2025
L3Harris to deliver advanced electronic warfare systems quickly for worldwide F-16 programs...
16/11/2025
Upgrading your Apogee Symphony MKII from TB2 to TB3: Need to Knows Upgrading your Apogee interface to Thunderbolt 3 isn't difficult - but it's not a cas...
16/11/2025
Apogee Electronics Acquired by Dirk Ulrich's Rockforce Tech Holding, Parent ...
15/11/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The Walt Disney Company and YouTube TV have reached a new multi-year distribution agreement, ending a carriage dispute that had blacked out ABC,...
15/11/2025
PLYMOUTH, Wis. A group of about 20 TV technology vendors supporting NextGen TV are wrapping up their ATSC 3.0 Interop here at Heartland Video Systems headquarte...
15/11/2025
NEW YORK NBCUniversal has announced that it will be launching NBC Sports Network (NBCSN), a 24/7 linear network featuring a wide range of marquee sporting event...
15/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released an updated agenda for its Open Meeting on Thursday, November 20, 2025, which is scheduled to comme...
15/11/2025
JERSEY CITY, N.J. OpenVault has released new data showing that DOCSIS 3.1 and higher services are driving significant across-the-board increases in speed and co...
15/11/2025
ATLANTA Gray Media has concluded an agreement with the Ohio Valley Conference ( OVC ) to broadcast OVC college basketball games across 20 Gray markets in five s...
15/11/2025
NEW BERN, N.C. Wheatstone has named company veteran Darrin Paley vice president of business accounts, effective immediately....
15/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Serves Up the Trailer for Dining with the Kapoors'...
14/11/2025
Op-Ed: The Automation Imperative - Why AI Is the Only Scalable Defense Against L...
14/11/2025
FutureSPORT 2025: Caretta Research on why streaming won't save broadcasters By Jo Ruddock
Monday, November 10, 2025 - 14:37
Print This Story
Caretta R...
14/11/2025
Daneysse Daniels, Emmy-Winning Production Manager and Beloved Teammate at TNT Sp...
14/11/2025
The NBA 2K League Returns as an Immersive Entertainment Ecosystem' With Non...
14/11/2025
Inaugural SVG LIVE! Conference Brings 250 Top Sports and Entertainment Producti...
14/11/2025
(L-R) Suzette Quintanilla, Isabel Castro, and Chris P rez attend the 2025 Sundan...
14/11/2025
Boston Conservatory Orchestra to Perform at Carnegie Hall for United Nations Gen...
14/11/2025
Berklee Alum Lewis Pickett Wins Record of the Year at Latin Grammy Awards Pickett, a 2009 graduate, was nominated six times across three categories at this ye...
14/11/2025
PLYMOUTH, Wisc. A group of about 20 TV technology vendors supporting NextGen TV are wrapping up their ATSC 3.0 Interop here at Heartland Video Services headquar...
14/11/2025
What if your idle operations centers, inactive cloud time, staff or you as a freelancer could start generating revenue tomorrow?
NECF Corporation today announc...
14/11/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, today announced that it has been recognized as a Major Player in the IDC MarketS...
14/11/2025
The recent ADAC RAVENOL 24h Race at Germany's legendary N rburgring circuit marked a milestone for live broadcast production, and Clear-Com played a pivota...
14/11/2025
Streaming tech companies M2A Media and Unified Streaming provided key software components that enabled the world's leading sports entertainment platform, DA...
14/11/2025
Lightware, an industry leader in signal management solutions, is strengthening its commitment to sustainability through a series of people-focused ESG (Environm...
14/11/2025
WASHINGTON As the federal government shut down comes to an end, the Federal Communications Commission has further extended some filing deadlines and issued some...
14/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. In the run-up to being spun off from Comcast, Versant has announced that USA Sports will be the new brand and division name for the company'...
14/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils the Trailer of City of Shadows
Entertainment
14 November 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
PREMIERING ON NETFLIX ...
14/11/2025
Today's AI workloads are data-intensive, requiring more scalable and afforda...