New ladder truck to be delivered in mid-March
If all goes as planned, the Kingston Fire Department’s new ladder truck will arrive in mid-March, city Fire Chief Mark Brown said Wednesday.
Brown said he plans to make a final inspection visit to the assembly plant in Ephrata, Pa., where the truck is being built, on March 8.
And “unless we hit a major snag,” the truck should be delivered the following week, Brown said.
Delivery of the truck, which has a price tag of $950,000, has been delayed a couple of times already, which Brown said “is frustrating.”
One of the delays was due to manufacturer Smeal Fire Apparatus being bought by Spartan ERV.
The new ladder truck, like the one it will replace, is a tiller truck. A tiller truck requires drivers at both the front and rear; a straight truck is driven only from the front.
The Kingston Fire Department’s current ladder truck dates to 1998 and has been beset by breakdowns in recent years.
It as five years ago that the Kingston Common Council authorized borrowing the money needed for the new truck, which is being bought through a purchasing cooperative called the National Joint Powers Alliance.
In July 2017, the city purchased a used fire truck from the New Paltz Fire Department. The 1995 pumper can put out 1,750 gallons of water per minute and will be used when one of Kingston’s other pumper trucks is out of service, which is often, Brown has said.
The city bought the New Paltz truck, an E-1 Custom Pumper with 27,000 miles on it, for $7,501.