New JFD Rescue Unit in Service as Supply Chain Issues Continue to Hamper Industry

By Jeremy Coumbes on October 19, 2023 at 3:30pm

The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue squad’s long wait for updated equipment ended recently amid continuing supply chain issues.

The Fire Department’s new rescue truck was delivered earlier this month after an approximately 18-month lead time from the factory. The new truck from Alexis Fire Equipment went into service the first week of October.

Jacksonville Fire Chief Doug Sills says they were lucky when the order was actually jumped ahead in line when another department backed out of an order for the same chassis Jacksonville needed. Otherwise, the new rescue unit would not have been delivered until sometime early next year.

He says the ongoing issues with the supply chain for fire equipment mean departments need to be more proactive in planning. “Right now they are about three years out on ladder trucks, at least at the time we ordered our new ladder they were three years behind. Right now on apparatus trucks, they are running about forty-one months out. So there is really having to be some long-range planning for apparatus replacement currently.”

Last year the Jacksonville City Council approved the purchase of a new ladder platform truck to replace the current ladder which Sills says is approximately 22 years old. The supply chain issues caused the ladder to be ordered a full three years ahead of time.

Sills says delivery on that vehicle has an even longer lead-out time than the fire rescue truck. He says his department has been planning ahead for some time now on rotating equipment in and out of service.

We’re kinda set for a bit right now with the ladder truck due in 2025. Depending on if the supply chain issues straighten out or if things get somewhat better, we’re not due to replace another piece of equipment probably until 2029. We’ve tried to get into where we’re leapfrogging our apparatus where we’re not having to make a purchase every two years or three years. But trying to leapfrog that out every five years to where we replace the rolling stock.”

Sills says a lot of thought went into the new fire rescue truck with increased visibility for both the operators and the public to conform with updated regulations. It also has a greater separation of equipment so medical and firefighting gear can be stored separately and out of the crew cab in order to separate any cross-contamination from a fire or medical emergency.

The delay in its arrival did come at a cost to the department after the old fire rescue truck sustained a catastrophic failure on the way to a fire prevention event at a local school in October of last year.

While we were waiting for the new unit to be built, the older rescue unit had a mechanical breakdown in which it ran away with itself and blew the motor up in it. But because it was our only unit and we couldn’t get moved to a higher priority in the manufacturing with Alexis, we had to spend about twenty thousand dollars in having a new motor put in that unit to keep running it until this unit was made available.”

Sills says the funds spent for the new motor are not going to waste however, as the old unit is staying in the fleet, it will be re-purposed as a backup to the new rescue unit, and more directly will be outfitted with their technical rescue equipment.

The truck will then be paired with the department’s tech-rescue trailer as a full tech-rescue response vehicle.