Call it Millville’s blue-light special?
Town able to score 15-year-old, restored fire truck at bargain outlet price
MILLVILLE — It’s the Swiss Army knife of fire engines.
And for this little town, it was a big score, says Fire Chief Ronald Landry.
The 2002 model-year American Lafrance is known in the public safety trade as a quint – short for quintuple, or five-function firefighting vehicle that combines the utility of a ladder truck, a tanker and a pump, with hose lines and ground ladders.
After a painstaking restoration that took place over the course of nearly a year, the vehicle looks and works like new, according to Landry. The town’s total cost was about $90,000 – a tenth of what it would cost to buy a new one.
“A little town like this, we’d never be able to afford something like that,” says Landry. “Through careful budgeting, negotiation and refurbishing through competitive pricing to a variety of specialty repair shops, Millville Fire Rescue kept the cost, including the purchase price, to about $90,000.
The cost was borne entirely by funds generated from the sale of Engine 1, said Landry. There was even some left over, which was returned to the town’s general fund. Essentially, he said, “the town made money on this purchase.”
The versatile quint’s unlikely journey began more than a year ago, when the fire department sold an old ladder truck because it was no longer compliant with the standards promulgated by the National Fire Protection Association.
That sale left the department with two engines. Some firefighters thought the mini-
fleet should include a ladder truck.
After talking it over with members of the department, a plan emerged: Sell one of the engines and start shopping around for a used ladder truck. After selling the engine to a department in Indiana last fall, Landry said firefighters embarked on a national search for a suitable ladder-type vehicle and found the quint for sale in Illinois. The department hadn’t been looking for a quint, but after considering the utility of the multi-purpose vehicle, it seemed like a no-brainer.
“The primary advantage of a quint is that it combines the functions of a ladder truck and a pumper into one vehicle, while adding a wide range of additional features,” said Landry. “It’s more maneuverable than full-sized ladder trucks, and it fits into places where larger apparatus cannot, making it ideal for Millville.”
Millville paid $25,000 for the vehicle in as-is condition, which means it needed extensive repairs to the body, engine and other mechanical systems.
The work, shopped out piecemeal to a hodgepodge of mechanics, body shops and other trade specialists on a competitive basis, ended up costing the town another $65,000 or so. Officially, the town took delivery of the vehicle last September, but it wasn’t ready for use until this week, after some finishing touches to the body.
“It’s a gorgeous truck,” the chief said. “It looks like a brand new truck and it should give us 18 to 20 years of service”