Lt. Keith Bickford drives Tanker 5 from the Rumford Fire Station. The 1994 International is being replaced, but will become a dump truck for the Public Works Department.
RUMFORD — Fire Chief Chris Reed said he expects the department to take delivery of a new 2020 fire engine by next March.
Selectmen last week unanimously approved the purchase, part of an equipment plan developed by Reed over the past month.
The “stock” vehicle will come from Midwest Fire in Luverne, Minnesota, which manufactures firetrucks, Reed said.
The $228,000 price tag includes delivery and a width adjustment to the mirrors to allow it to fit the opening of the station doors. Reed said there is $600,000 in the department’s capital account.
“When I got here,” he said, former Chief Bob Chase “was going to buy one apparatus for just under $600,000. I don’t want to do that. I want to buy stock items. Plain-Jane vehicles that hold the same amount of water.
Reed said he has the items to equip the new truck.
“We’re going to get a 2,000-gallon-a-minute tank, with a thousand-gallons-a-minute pump,” he said.
The truck will replace Tanker 5, which has 2,500-gallon tank “but only pumps off at 264 gallons a minute. So it takes forever to pump it off,” the chief said.
With the new truck, “I can pump the whole thing off in two minutes. It makes rotations for water much faster,” he said.
The new truck also weighs less than Tanker 5, which is important to protect the floor of the old fire station, built in 1912 when apparatus weighed far less. Reed pointed out cracks on the floor from the weight of the fire vehicles.
Reed said sometime next year he would like to purchase a stock thousand-gallon pumper to replace Engine 7, a 2001 truck. He said it cost less than $300,000.
Tanker 5, a 1994 International, will become a summer dump truck.
Reed said it needs $25,000 in repairs to the pump/tank, which are not worth the investment, and “none of the fire manufacturers want an old trade-in.”
He noted, however, that the truck’s engine and frame are fine, and it has a heavy-duty suspension in back.
Reed said the Public Works Department will move $10,000 from its capital account to the Fire Department capital account to take ownership of Engine 5.
Dale Roberts, recently named director of public works, said that by using it as a dump truck during the summer, it will prolong the life of the newer trucks in his department.
“Instead of spending a couple hundred thousand dollars for a new dump truck,” Reed said, “there’s going to be a huge cost savings to the town overall by making these moves.”
Reed said he wants to take Engine 7, which has been a workhorse, remove the pump and put a rescue body on the back of it, and get rid of the old rescue truck.
“So I’ll have three solid pieces of equipment,” he said. “I can definitely get the tanker and the engine with what I have now for capital, and when the rescue (truck) comes up (for replacement), make that move.”
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