By Daniel Jackson
masslive.com
WESTFIELD, Mass. — Westfield Fire Chief Patrick Egloff says his department was scheduled to receive a new fire truck in August. Now, the manufacturer is telling the department the truck won’t be delivered until next year.
It’s an experience playing out at fire stations across Massachusetts and the country. After placing an order for a new fire truck, a department can wait up to three or four years before seeing the vehicle — a situation one western Massachusetts fire official calls a “nightmare.”
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At the same time, many are paying double what they were charged just years before.
Fire truck manufacturers say they have yet to climb out of supply chain problems caused by the pandemic, resulting in delays.
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Others, like U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., see a broader issue at play: Consolidation driven by private equity that began before the pandemic has led to a near-monopoly in the industry.
Jay Colbert, vice president of District 3 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said consolidation in the fire truck industry over the last six or seven years has stressed municipal budgets. A fire engine that used to cost $500,000 now fetches $1 million. A ladder truck that once cost a municipality $1 million now goes for $2 million.
“If they’re going to spend twice as much on fire trucks,” Colbert said, “there’s not enough money to pay for firemen. … The most valuable thing we bring to a fire is healthy, knowledgeable firefighters. And you know, the equipment that we ride on is paramount in that.”
The union has been pushing the federal government — the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission — to launch investigations into the industry.
What fire officials say
Fire chiefs around the state say wait times have gotten longer and prices have increased. They differ in their approaches to updating fleets. Some opt to wait until they can acquire a vehicle tailored to the tasks it would likely encounter in their communities. Others have turned to “stock” fire trucks or scoured for a used vehicle. Some rushed to bring a new truck online after they had to suddenly pull a fire truck out of service
Franklin
Chuck Allen, chief of the Franklin Fire Department, said his community in Norfolk County that sits along Interstate 495, faced a budget shortfall of a couple of hundred thousand dollars last year and the town considered cutting firefighter and police officer positions. The positions were saved, but it came at the expense of cuts elsewhere in the community.
For Allen, a big concern about the state of fire truck availability is cost.
A tower truck the town received in June after ordering it 30 months before cost $1.9 million, about $400,000 to $500,000 less than if the vehicle was purchased today, Allen said.
About two-and-a-half years ago, Franklin purchased an ambulance, which cost $280,000. Franklin is looking to buy another ambulance. Today, that same vehicle costs $406,000 and has a delivery date sometime in 2028, Allen said.
The rising expense robs from firefighting payrolls.
“These dollars represent firefighters,” Allen said. And while salaries and funding for equipment come from different parts of the budget, “that money has to come from someplace,” he said.
Bellingham
William R. Miller, chief of the Bellingham Fire Department, said at one point, the department was working with a 25-year-old fire engine that “should have been off the road,” but was patched up and kept operational. A collision rendered the department’s ladder truck out of service, and it had to rely on help from neighboring departments.
“We had no spare apparatus,” Miller said. “If we lost a pumper for maintenance reasons, we were putting a brush truck in its place … We did that maybe a year, if not a little bit more, because we had no spare apparatus. We had nothing in reserve.”
Bellingham turned to stock vehicles, a program Miller described as a lottery system. Around the first of the month, the department vied with other departments nationwide for vehicles made available by a manufacturer. Bellingham purchased three fire trucks that way.
While the system worked well for his department, Miller said it might not serve everyone. The apparatus is already designed by an engineer and firefighters might not like all the details that go into the truck.
“This is a gamble that you take because you don’t have a lot of say,” Miller said. “You can change paint colors, you can do some graphics, things like that.”
East Longmeadow
The custom pumper East Longmeadow ordered to replace a 31-year-old vehicle took about 18 months to acquire, said Fire Chief Christopher Beecher. It entered service on July 4.
“Unfortunately,” Beecher said, “it’s become part of the business of replacing your fleet .... You have to think a few years ahead as far as what you’re going to need so that you can get your funding and get your order in, so that your truck is in the pipeline to get produced.”
For some departments, the wait is worth it for vehicles tailored to specific tasks, he said. The vehicles come with features such as compartments that supply power to battery-operated tools.
“You’re looking to get 20 years out of these vehicles. … That’s a long time to go operating in a vehicle that doesn’t meet what you need,” Beecher said.
Westfield
The truck that Westfield Fire is waiting for is a custom machine it ordered two-and-a-half years ago. Many fire departments seek out custom vehicles to tailor the truck to the emergencies they will likely encounter. Egloff said his department wants the Pierce Velocity to have enough engine power to handle the elevation changes on the Massachusetts Turnpike, because the department covers the route past the Blandford rest area, responding to calls of strokes, heart attacks, tractor-trailer fires and worse.
Westfield paid $870,000 for the truck out of an account funded through insurance receipts. If purchased today, the same truck would cost $1.2 million.
“I’m just hoping that they’re not profit-gouging,” Egloff said.
In addition to the truck intended for calls in the Mass Pike, Westfield Fire recently purchased two stock fire trucks.
One was purchased out of necessity. When the Westfield Fire put its fire trucks up on a lift to inspect their chassis, “One of them we took out of service right away, because we found some frame rot on it,” said Egloff. It was a “safety concern, not just for the firefighters, but for the public also.”
This led the department to make an emergency purchase of a new fire truck, a stock-model apparatus that entered service in July as Engine 5. It took about four to six months to get the vehicle, Egloff said.
Pelham
Firefighting industry standards call for departments to replace fire trucks when they are 20 years old.
Pelham Fire Chief Dennis E. Nazzaro said his department tried for years to snag a grant to purchase a replacement for a truck that is now about 35 years old.
But grants are competitive, and the new tanker truck, costing about $415,000, is coming out of a taxpayer-funded account.
Pelham’s old truck, a tanker that carries 3,500 gallons, has a manual transmission.
“I only have a handful of people that can actually drive that truck safely,” Nazzaro said.
Pelham purchased two fire trucks recently. “I don’t know how we lucked out,” Nazzaro said, but the tanker truck — used to bring water to rural fires — is being built by a small company, as a tanker needs less customization.
The tanker was due to be delivered in July, but its arrival is still weeks away, Nazzaro said, caused by a delay of parts.
About two years ago, the Pelham department bought a used fire engine from a fire department in Long Island, a machine Nazzaro described as “a diamond in the rough.” Many used fire trucks have a lot of miles put on them, he said, and “everybody’s looking for vehicles.”
Springfield
Springfield Fire Commissioner Bernard Calvi calls the whole situation with sourcing new fire trucks “somewhat of an inconvenience” that’s managed by planning ahead, budgeting and looking for ways to speed up production. For instance, the Springfield Fire Department has purchased its last few ladder trucks as stock pieces.
“You don’t get every bell and whistle or option you want,” Calvi said, but the Springfield department waits about six months for a new vehicle.
Springfield Fire accepted delivery at the beginning of October of a ladder truck that it purchased for $2.1 million.
One factor influencing the cost and maintenance of fire trucks are Environmental Protection Administration diesel emission standards, Calvi said. Those rules have led to higher maintenance costs, as fire engines are pushed hard and idle for long times at calls.
Antitrust allegations
But what Calvi describes as an annoyance is a “crisis,” according to a group of U.S. senators at a hearing on Capitol Hill about the issue last month.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, said Wall Street was to blame for a situation where backlogs for fire vehicles increase, and profits for those companies climb.
“In 2008, a private equity entity bought up a fire truck manufacturer,” said Hawley, who chaired the hearing of the Subcommittee on Disaster Management, “and over the next decade rolled up six or seven more fire truck brands in what today is known as the REV Group. As a result, some 70% to 80% of the market is controlled by three or four companies.”
A representative from REV Group, Mike Virnig, the company’s president of its specialty vehicles group, testified at the Sept. 10 hearing, along with Dan Meyer, vice president of sales for Pierce Manufacturing.
They told Warren, who is not a member of the subcommittee but was allowed to participate, that they are cooperating with an FTC inquiry.
Warren said the FTC had the authority to investigate, and it was important for the federal government to determine whether antitrust laws were broken and whether fire truck manufacturers “made it more difficult for firefighters to do their jobs and keep us safe.”
In April, Warren co-signed a letter with U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, sent to the International Association of Fire Fighters seeking to learn more about firefighters’ experiences purchasing new trucks. Her office reached out to about 30 fire departments across Massachusetts.
One department, which went unnamed in Warren’s letter, placed an order in 2022 and then another order for two more trucks a year later. The manufacturer then hiked the price of the first vehicle by $150,000, an increase the chief felt the department had to pay to have the truck delivered, the letter says.
The lawmakers are not the only group to inquire into this. The city of La Crosse, Wisconsin , filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the major fire truck manufacturers in August, alleging antitrust violations.
Not only have private equity firms bought up fire truck manufacturers, but dealerships have consolidated, too. In New England, the lawsuit says, there is only one dealership that sells Pierce fire trucks, Allegiance Fire and Rescue, which operates a territory stretching from Vermont and Massachusetts to Rhode Island. Allegiance became the sole provider of Pierce fire trucks in the region after an acquisition with Minuteman Fire and Rescue.
“These consolidations, which have largely eliminated geographic overlaps and given Pierce dealers exclusive control across vast territories, have reduced or eliminated competition among Pierce subsidiaries,” the lawsuit reads.
The vice president of Allegiance Fire and Rescue did not return a request for comment.
Manufacturers respond
When pressed by Warren during the Sept. 10 hearing, Pierce’s Meyer told the lawmaker that his firm is a “more than 100-year-old company. We have been fair and honest and transparent with our customers through that. I do not believe we have anything to hide.”
Meyer said in written testimony to the Senate subcommittee that it takes about 2,000 hours to create a fire apparatus that’s customized to carry a couple thousand gallons of water in rural environments or outfitted with tall ladders and more powerful pumps for a truck used in a city.
During the Great Recession, many fire departments pushed off buying new fire trucks. That all changed when communities started receiving pandemic relief funding. That led to a 45% increase in the demand for trucks following the pandemic, Meyer wrote.
Price increases for fire trucks have begun to slow, Meyer added, because inflation has begun to cool, too.
Capt. David Rex, Holyoke Fire Department’s public information officer, said the department is “actively watching the nightmare,” because, while the department is not looking for fire trucks at the moment, it will begin to update its fleet in about two and a half years.
The oldest truck Holyoke Fire has in reserve is a 2001 made by Pierce. It has few mechanical programs, Rex said, compared to more modern trucks with exhaust cleaners and computers.
A truck shouldn’t take two and a half years to build, Rex said. When it comes time to buy, “We’re hoping that some of this stuff will be ironed out.”
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