Built by First Responders. Built for First Responders.
Matthew Burrell is an active firefighter who founded Burrell Enterprises after seeing firsthand how bad radio equipment costs departments more than money. He's stood on scene where a dead battery or garbled talkgroup wasn't an inconvenience — it was a real risk to the crew. This is the story of why he decided to fix it.
Active Firefighter
Matthew still pulls shifts on the line — so the gear he sells is gear he'd carry into a structure fire himself.
He's been on the other end of a bad radio.
Matthew Burrell has stood on real scenes — structure fires with heavy involvement, EMS calls where seconds mattered, mutual aid responses where three departments showed up and nobody could talk to each other. On more than one of those calls, communication failure wasn't a minor inconvenience. It was a real risk to the people on the line.
He watched departments get sold consumer-grade gear by reps who'd never worn turnout gear in their lives — radios that looked right on a catalog sheet but couldn't hold a signal through a smoke-filled hallway, batteries that died halfway through a shift, programming that nobody on the department understood. And then the reps vanished the moment the sale closed, leaving a chief to decipher programming software alone at midnight before a drill.
That gap — between what gets sold and what actually works on scene — is exactly why Matthew started Burrell Enterprises. Not to be another vendor with a price list, but to be a dealer who tests the gear he sells on real incidents, who programs it to match the departments around you, and who still picks up the phone when something goes wrong at 2 a.m. before a major call.
The promise is simple: nothing leaves this shop that Matthew wouldn't carry into a fire himself.
"I've been the firefighter holding a radio that wouldn't transmit. I've been the one trying to reach an interior crew and hearing nothing but static. I started this business so other departments wouldn't have to learn that lesson the hard way."
— Matthew Burrell, Founder & Active Firefighter
A dealer who answers the call — before and after the sale.
Most radio sales reps move on to the next account the day the invoice clears. Matthew built Burrell Enterprises on the opposite idea — that communications equipment is a responsibility, not a transaction.
Firefighter-Tested
Every radio Matthew recommends has been evaluated through real fireground and EMS conditions — not just a spec sheet. If it won't survive a working fire, it doesn't make the list.
Honest Pricing
No corporate padding, no inflated markups. Quotes are built for municipal and volunteer department budgets, with maximum interoperability per dollar.
Still Answers the Call
Direct phone access to Matthew — not a ticket queue, not a call center. When a channel drops before a drill or incident, you talk to the person who can fix it.
Full-Lifecycle Support
Programming, training, and ongoing service long after the sale. Burrell Enterprises is a partner through the life of the equipment, not a one-time vendor.
Experience that shows up on scene.
Still pulling shifts on the line — not just selling from an office.
Fire, EMS, and law enforcement departments across the Southeast.
Every radio delivered programmed, tested, and ready to talk out of the box.
One call. A firefighter who gets it.
No ticket queues, no call centers, no reps reading from a script. When you call Burrell Enterprises, you reach Matthew — an active firefighter who understands your department's comms because he depends on the same gear himself.
Serving fire departments, EMS, and first responders across Tennessee and the Southeast.