Consolidated net sales for the quarter were $298 million, up $19 million or 7% compared to last year.
Consolidated operating income for the quarter was $34.3 million, up $300,000 or 1% compared to last year.
Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $47.4 million, up $1.5 million or 3% compared to last year.
That translates to a margin of 15.9% in Q3 this year compared to 16.4% last year.
Net income for the quarter was $29.2 million, up $3.9 million or 15% from last year.
That equates to GAAP earnings for the quarter of $0.47 per share, up 15% from $0.41 per share last year.
On an adjusted basis, earnings per share for the quarter was $0.48 per share, an improvement of 14% compared to $0.42 per share last year.
Both our GAAP earnings per share and adjusted earnings per share for the third quarter of this year included benefits from a tax planning strategy executed during the quarter, which resulted in approximately $3.3 million more in discrete tax benefits being recognized in Q3 this year compared to Q3 of last year.
In the aggregate, these higher tax benefits represented approximately $0.05 of our year over year earnings per share improvement.
Order intake for the quarter was again outstanding with orders of $350 million, representing an increase of $85 million or 32% compared to last year.
Consolidated backlog at the end of the quarter set another new company record of $487 million.
That represents an increase of $183 million or 60% from the end of last year.
In terms of our group results, ESG's net sales for the quarter were $249 million, up $18 million or 8% compared to last year.
ESG's operating income for the quarter was $30.8 million compared to $33 million last year.
ESG's adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $42.7 million compared to $43.9 million last year.
That translates to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.1% in Q3 this year compared to 19% last year.
ESG reported total orders of $292 million in Q3 this year, an improvement of $72 million or 33% compared to last year.
SSG's net sales for the quarter were $49 million this year, up 1% compared to last year.
SSG's operating income for the quarter was $7.6 million, up from $7.4 million last year, while its adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $8.5 million, up from $8.2 million last year.
That translates to an adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter of 17.3%, up 50 basis points from last year.
SSG's orders for the quarter were $58 million, up $13 million or 27% compared to last year.
Corporate operating expenses for the quarter were $4.1 million compared to $6.4 million last year.
Turning now to the consolidated income statement where despite the year over year sales increase, gross profit decreased by $1.7 million.
Consolidated gross margin for the quarter was 23.8% compared to 25.9% last year.
With steel and other commodity costs continuing to increase and chassis constraints delaying certain shipments out of our backlog, we experienced a slightly higher unfavorable price cost headwind of around $5 million during the quarter, about $2 million higher than we had previously anticipated.
As a percentage of sales, our selling, engineering, general and administrative expenses for the quarter were down 160 basis points from Q3 last year.
Other items affecting the quarterly results include a $200,000 increase in acquisition related expenses, a $200,000 increase in other income, and a $100,000 reduction in interest expense.
Tax expense for the quarter decreased by $3.3 million, largely due to the recognition of the tax planning benefits that I just mentioned.
Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 12.8% compared to 23.1% last year.
At this time, we expect our full year effective tax rate to be approximately 18%.
On an overall GAAP basis, we therefore earned $0.47 per share in Q3 this year compared with $0.41 per share in Q3 last year.
In the current year quarter, we made adjustments to GAAP earnings per share to exclude acquisition related expenses and purchase [Technical Issues] On this basis, our adjusted earnings for the quarter were $0.48 per share compared with $0.42 per share last year.
Looking now at cash flow, where we generated $16 million of cash from operations during the quarter, up 8% from Q3 last year.
That brings the year to date operating cash generation to $55 million.
Towards the end of the quarter, we increased our borrowings in anticipation of the Ground Force acquisition, which we completed in early October for an initial payment of $43 million.
We ended the quarter with $164 million of net debt and availability under our credit facility of $240 million.
On that note, we paid dividends of $5.5 million during the quarter, reflecting a dividend of $0.09 per share, and we recently announced a similar dividend for the fourth quarter.
We also funded share repurchases of $3.2 million during the quarter at an average price of $38.44.
While the teams have performed admirably, we estimate the delays in chassis deliveries and various other part shortages along with the constant production schedule adjustments caused an adverse top line impact of approximately $30 million during the quarter.
As we did last year with the pandemic, so far this year our businesses have been able to navigate through a variety of supply chain related issues and deliver an EBITDA margin of almost 16% demonstrating that as a company we are more resilient than in the past, and we continue to believe that at this level of margin performance we would rank within the top decile of our specialty vehicle peers.
Overall, our aftermarket revenues in Q3 this year were up $12 million or 18% over last year, growing to represent a higher share of ESG's revenues for the quarter at around 30%.
Rental activity and demand for used equipment continues to be strong with rental income in Q3 up 29% year over year and used equipment sales exceeding $10 million for the third successive quarter.
Demand for our product offering continues to be as strong as ever as demonstrated by our outstanding third quarter order intake of $350 million, contributing to another record backlog, reflecting strength across our end markets.
In that package, approximately $350 billion was earmarked for state, local, and territorial governments for a variety of purposes including the maintenance of essential infrastructure such as sewer systems and streets.
Conversations with our dealer channels suggest that the first $175 billion tranche has started to be distributed by the treasury in May with the second tranche expected next year.
This is supported by the ongoing strength of U.S. municipal orders, which were up 50% for both the quarter and year to date period with notably strong demand for street sweepers and sewer cleaners.
In fact, so far this year, our U.S. municipal orders for street sweepers are up $46 million or 84% over last year, while sewer cleaner orders are up $45 million or 64% over the same period.
Within our industrial end market, we've also seen a 50% year over year improvement in domestic orders.
The improvement has been almost across the board, but notably for our TRUVAC safe digging trucks and for our Guzzler industrial vacuum motors, which collectively were up $45 million or 87% year over year.
Over the last 12 months, Ground Force generated revenues of approximately $34 million with an EBITDA margin within our group target range.
Over the last 12 months, Deist has generated revenues of approximately $41 million with a double-digit EBITDA margin.
We continue to see strong momentum in our markets as evidenced by the 50% improvement in both U.S. municipal and industrial orders so far this year.
We expect that the volatile supply chain environment will continue for the rest of the year, and therefore, we are adjusting our full year adjusted earnings per share outlook to a new range of $1.68 to $1.78.
Our new outlook range also excludes the impact of a one-time non-cash pre-tax pension settlement charge of approximately $11 million, which we expect to incur in the fourth quarter in connection with the defined benefit pension annuitization project.
And we also expect the Infrastructure Bill, with $550 billion in new spending, we could see capital equipment demand increase to support infrastructure investments in areas such as roads, bridges, electrification, broadband, clean energy and water, and public transportation buildup.
With an ongoing focus on 80-20 principle, Federal Signal has become a more resilient business delivering a consistent level of EBITDA margin above many of our peers.
Recently, we took a survey, and in our three largest facilities, which comprise almost half of our U.S. hourly workforce, we currently have approximately 20 hourly job openings out of almost 1,000 positions.
On that note, we recently issued our second annual Sustainability Report, which highlights many of our accomplishments in this area including our project 85 initiatives to increase vaccination rates across the organization.

Summary:
Consolidated net sales for the quarter were $298 million, up $19 million or 7% compared to last year.
That equates to GAAP earnings for the quarter of $0.47 per share, up 15% from $0.41 per share last year.
On an adjusted basis, earnings per share for the quarter was $0.48 per share, an improvement of 14% compared to $0.42 per share last year.
Order intake for the quarter was again outstanding with orders of $350 million, representing an increase of $85 million or 32% compared to last year.
On an overall GAAP basis, we therefore earned $0.47 per share in Q3 this year compared with $0.41 per share in Q3 last year.
In the current year quarter, we made adjustments to GAAP earnings per share to exclude acquisition related expenses and purchase [Technical Issues] On this basis, our adjusted earnings for the quarter were $0.48 per share compared with $0.42 per share last year.
We expect that the volatile supply chain environment will continue for the rest of the year, and therefore, we are adjusting our full year adjusted earnings per share outlook to a new range of $1.68 to $1.78.