Three for one: that’s what the Jacksonville Fire Department is hoping to get with the sale of a truck from their fleet.
Jacksonville Fire Chief Matt Summers presented the Jacksonville City Council with a proposal on Monday night to sell the department’s lead Emergency Medical Services F-550 truck in order to purchase 3 smaller trucks that would benefit the department in the long run financially and strategically.
Summers says that the company that the department bought the F-550 from a couple of years ago wants to buy back the truck at a profit to the city: “They can resell it to some other department up north that may have a need for it because it’s 2 years out for someone to get another truck just like this built. I believe that we can take and buy two F-250s and set them all up with a complete camper shell built for us for fire & rescue use with slide outs, storage containers, and everything in the back; put the right racks on them. They are four-wheel drive trucks. They’re much lighter and more fuel efficient, more maintenance efficient. They will be brand new, stock trucks with just some minor upgrades. Then, all of those containers, toppers, and lights can kind of plug and play to the next vehicle as we rotate through to new vehicles. In theory, every 3-5 years, we could trade these new F-250s off for a brand new one, and maintain a much better shape truck that gets ran hard every day. We can also keep them under warranty, too. It’s also a stock truck that can be worked on locally at our local Ford dealership versus having to ship them off to a repair shop up in Peoria or out of state. It’ll keep the money locally. It’s just more efficient and cost effective. This deal gives us 3 new apparatus for one.”
The two additional vehicles will replace the Chief’s command buggy and a heavier F-350 truck at the main fire station, which is a brush fire attack unit. The Chief’s command buggy would also serve as a back-up EMS unit should the other EMS unit from the other F-250 go down.
The cost to the city would be minimal, if anything, based upon the resale value from the F-550’s sale due to the length of manufacture and the seller’s market for used vehicle at the current time. The city council approved the measure unanimously.