West Grey is purchasing a new fire truck.
Council approved a recommendation from Fire Chief Phil Schwartz during a meeting on Oct. 17 to sign a purchase contract for the new vehicle.
The over $633,000 new truck will be housed at the Durham Station and the most recently purchased truck in 2005 will be moved to the Ayton Station to replace the retiring vehicle from 1995.
“Although there is no national standard that legally mandates the replacement of emergency vehicles, it is critical to replace these and other apparatus before they become unreliable. Over the long-term, delaying the replacement is unadvisable as it will add to the overall maintenance costs of the apparatus,” says the report from Schwartz.
Schwartz says the National Fire Protection Agency recommends fire departments replace their trucks every 15 years.
“We are averaging 180 calls a year, I can’t justify replacing a truck at 15 years so we have been stretching them out, and this goes back before I was chief, to 20 years and it seems to work for us,” says Schwartz. “We keep one truck back for the simple reason you have breakdowns and at the 30 year mark, we have been dumping those trucks.”
Requests for proposals were issued to seven manufacturers and four were received as of the closing date at the end of August. Staff recommended purchasing the truck from Fort Garry Fire Trucks.
The truck is set to arrive in 2025.
