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Spencer City Council Approves Fire Truck Purchases

April 16, 2024 Steve Schwaller

(Spencer)– The Spencer Fire Department is updating its fleet. The city council Monday evening approved the purchase of a new ladder truck, replacing one that’s currently about 20 years-old, along with a new rescue-pumper truck. The total cost was put at nearly $2.7 million.

Fire Chief Jesse Coulson told the council the department rotates its fire engines every 10 years due to wear and tear and to keep up with new regulations and safety features. He says the new rescue-pumper will allow them to combine multiple trucks into one…

“We actually have five pieces of equipment that these two pieces of equipment will replace, so we’re reducing our fleet, our aging fleet, by three vehicles and replacing them with these two vehicles. One of these engines are actually going to be a rescue-pumper. Today we have what you would call a dry rescue. Say for instance you have a vehicle accident, you don’t know if there’s a fire, if you need suppression, we have to get two pieces of equipment and potentially 11 members to that scene to extinguish a fire and do an extrication. By eliminating those two and actually putting them into one, which would be what we call a rescue-pumper, we now bring all of that equipment with six personnel to the scene.”

Coulson says that results in increased efficiency with manpower and equipment.

He adds the rescue-pumper has a 32 month delivery timeframe while it’s more like 42 months for the ladder truck.

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