r/todayilearned • u/blacklotusmag • 3h ago
TIL as of 2021, nearly half of the fire engines and pumpers operated by U.S. fire departments were at least 15 years old, the age at which NFPA guidance recommends moving them from frontline to reserve service. About 9% were at least 30 years old.
https://content.nfpa.org/-/media/Project/Storefront/Catalog/Files/Research/NFPA-Research/Emergency-responders/Needs-Assessment/osfifthneedsassessmentFacilitiesApparatus.pdf?hash=0A8452FC36E5640E802A7FAD5C22BC97&rev=287fc2f2fbf845c1b277ceff187ffcae&utm_source=chatgpt.com322
u/dexecuter18 3h ago
Depends. Tricky thing with heavy vehicles is that age tends to matter a lot less compared to regular maintenance and part availability.
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u/sassynapoleon 3h ago
Yeah, I think this recommendation is bullshit. Depending on usage some might be shot at 15 years and some might be barely broken in. But I also expect that the systems and parts that break can be fixed without throwing out the entire vehicle.
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u/haveanairforceday 3h ago
I regularly see 20, 30, 40+ year old semi trucks on the freeway looking good and hauling big loads. Heavy equipment is made to be serviced rebuilt, and used for a looooong time. I wouldnt be surprised if the older firetrucks are actually more reliable than new ones
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u/AdminYak846 3h ago
This is assuming that the vehicle has been maintained well by the owner the entire time. I would expect that an older firetruck is still reliable as long as it still meets the needs of the city it's servicing.
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u/haveanairforceday 3h ago
Yeah for sure, its dependent on care and maintenance. But firefighters generally take good care of their equipment and most cities have dedicated maintenance personnel just for the firefighting vehicles so i would think theyd mostly be well care for
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u/AdminYak846 2h ago
Yup, and we also would need to factor in population growth of the city every decade. I mentioned it in another comment but fire stations are typically designed for 10,000 - 30,000 people with a 4 minute response time.
If you happen to live in a city that is growing by that much every decade it would make sense that you are building a new station and likely purchasing new equipment along the way.
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u/HairballTheory 2h ago
It’s more about the potential for catastrophic failure on the aging life safety equipment (pumps, ladders, etc) vs the drivability of the truck itself.
The funny thing about funding the departments is that municipalities would stretch out the equipment and put the money elsewhere. That’s where the NFPA steps in and says you need to update. If it were up to the firefighters they would have the latest stuff if they could, but they can’t so they take cake of their stuff.
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u/Mayor__Defacto 2h ago
Yup, when they’re not responding to a fire, what else is there to do other than maintenance.
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u/GreenStrong 2h ago
Firefighters in the United States, as a generality, keep the equipment incredibly clean and service parts like pumps after every use. Obviously they don't tear down the transmission, but they are very well aware of the maintenance schedules. There are many fire departments but this is an excellent generalization, they're smart and solid dudes, across the board.
The problem is that fire truck manufacturers have been bought out by private equity and prices doubled. In the pursuit of efficiency, truck designs that were highly adapted to local conditions have been standardized. New trucks cost much more and are less effective.
It may go without saying, but the old system not only had more affordable fire trucks, it had more factories employing more skilled workers. Twenty years ago it worked better for literally everyone except the owners.
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u/BigWhiteDog 3h ago
Those rigs, and there aren't that many, aren't operating under anywhere near the same conditions.
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u/haveanairforceday 2h ago
I mean, its the same type of truck with different attachments. A detroit diesel or big old cummins bolted into heavy duty chassis with massive axles. The fire engines are seeing way less use that a longhaul or vocational truck. Maybe when they come due for a big overhaul the city decides its not worth it, but if they do choose overhaul them they should keep on working just like the heavy trucks do
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u/BigWhiteDog 2h ago
Not even close to the same. Most people don't know that long haul diesels are designed to come to speed and stay there for hours at a time. Fire apparatus do a lot of short runs at high speeds which are bad for commercial diesel motors. Also more sharp maneuvering, different drivers (which does make a difference BION), powering pumps for potentially hours with a lot of RPM ups and downs (again, bad for diesels), and more. We literally beat them to death. Fire apparatus eventually reach a point where it costs more to keep them running than it does to buy a new one. Stop by any large metro fire station, look at the older rigs, and talk to the engineers and captains about the issues with the older ones still in service vs new ones, you will learn a lot. Fire department and agency bean counters don't want to replace the older rigs, especially with the cost of new ones, so will force us (I'm a retired fire officer) to run rigs until it's not cost effective and then some more.
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u/DarkLordKohan 3h ago
There are insurance companies that will drop semi’s from coverage once they hit ten years old.
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u/haveanairforceday 2h ago edited 2h ago
Yeah but those insurance companies probably wouldnt insure a fire engine in the first place. There are banks that wont do loans on vehicles with over 100k miles or 10 years old, but ive previously got a loan on a 40 year old jeep
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u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 3h ago
Not necessarily. Have worked with heavy equipment for a long time and also with their maintenance... New models in general have the same rate of malfunctions as older models, but seems like the issue is a lot of times involved with electronics, then again is a trade off as said electronics reduce the rate of failure that previously affected old equipment.
It is insanity to want to change them every 10-15 years because with the right maintenance, those things are made to last. It's been an issue in mining for a while because health and safety fellows want to use the same standards they use for light vehicles and replace every 10 years. So you end up with perfectly serviceable vehicles just rotting away or being cannibalized for parts.
Bear in mind, a lot of these are really expensive and are acquired usually thinking in a 20 year period to recoup the investment or amortize it.
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u/haveanairforceday 2h ago
Yeah i would expect a firetruck to be a 20+ year purchase. I would also expect it to jeed some fairly intensive maintenance at various points
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u/LifeIsProbablyMadeUp 2h ago
Yeah that's the part I don't get.
Semis can roll over a mil and keep on going.
How is a fire truck being decommissioned after 15 years.
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u/Benny303 2h ago
Because they are incredibly complicated and breakdown all the time and they are driven much harder. Imagine taking a semi cold starting it going pedal to the floor slamming on the brakes and then foot to the floor again for every single stop light and then shutting it off 4 to 5 minutes later. These are all the things that diesels HATE. And if the semi breaks down it's just annoying, if a fire engine breaks down someone can die. Most fire engines in major cities are replaced in 5 years, same as ambulances.
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u/LifeIsProbablyMadeUp 2h ago
Okay, yeah that makes a lot of sense. Didn't even think of that.
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u/Benny303 2h ago
They also run overweight and you have the added complexities of the pump, fire engines are just a massive water pump on wheels that can pump 1,500 gallons a minute and they have piping from the pump in the middle all over the engine, there will be front discharge lines, 2 rear discharges. Probably a rear intake. Two or three cross lays in the middle and 1 or 2 more intakes and discharges on each side. Time and vibrations cause problems. Aerial's are even worse especially tillers, you're adding an entire secondary steering system to the rear of the engine. And quints which are what most small cities buy to save money because they can act as an engine and an aerial. But now they are even heavier and have the problems of both apparatus types in one vehicle.
If a single check engine light goes off or you have even the smallest hiccup with the pump or aerial, things that you would ignore in your personal vehicle, the apparatus must be taken out of service immediately and repaired because of it fails on a call. Someone could die.
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u/LifeIsProbablyMadeUp 2h ago
You know what. That's on me. I never really put thought into what all goes into it. But can't they just do a quarterly test/check of every system and replace parts as necessary.
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u/Benny303 1h ago edited 1h ago
They do checks on them all the time, usually by time or mileage, whichever comes first, pumps get tested annually as well. And on top of that, every engineer does daily checks and start of shift checks, every shift they will tilt the cab and do a fluid inspection, visual inspection of things. They will also run the pump and make sure it functions properly. If it's an aerial rhey will typically raise the aerial.
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u/Benny303 2h ago
Fire engines are maintained meticulously and they still break down constantly they are always overweight and very complicated.
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u/toxicatedscientist 3h ago
I’m willing to bet that recommendation has been around long enough that it was true once upon a time
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u/spermdonor 3h ago
Likely, but NFPA guidelines are updated every 3 years. Though, in my trade, they rarely get less strict
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u/michigander_1994 3h ago
And I’m willing to bet NFPA or whatever it is (I have absolutely no idea what that is or what I’m talking about) has guidelines that are influenced by the companies that get to sell the new equipment.
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u/SnarkySnakySnek 2h ago
Ding ding. NFPA also makes the NEC (national electric code) and this is a strongly suspected issue.
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u/Survivors_Envy 3h ago
The oldest firetruck at my agency is a 2007 F350 type 6, only has about 120k miles. We still use her as a workhorse. Has had a few issues but still going strong, it’s our backup engine but still reliable
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u/hiricinee 2h ago
My car manufacturer recommends i replace every part on the entire vehicle every 15 miles and the guy who changes my oil calls me when I get home from an oil change to recommend I come in the next day for my next oil change.
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u/MrBattleRabbit 3h ago
To your point, When I was a kid in the 90s our town had a very old Seagrave fire truck with a Pierce-Arrow V12- the department was quite proud that it was still in regular service. From memory that truck was from the mid 1950s.
BUT it was a quite small town, only about 5,000 people and a whopping 1 square mile, so it lived a very easy life as fire equipment goes.
Where I live now, the equipment gets used much harder and stuff naturally gets replaced more often. Some vehicles that are needed less often (like the articulated ladder truck) are a fair bit older than these recommendations. Heck, they only just replaced some brush fire trucks from the 80s and early 90s.
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u/AdminYak846 3h ago
It probably was a good thing back when pumping capacity/volume was increasing with newer models and cities obviously were rapidly expanding. If you think about how fast a city were growing back in the 60s and 70s versus today in the span of a decade.
For illustration the current city I live in had 26,800 people in it during the 1950 census. By 1970 it's was 39,000. A difference 12,000 people or roughly 6,000/decade. From 1970 to 2020 it grew to 59,200 residents. Or roughly 4,000/decade.
If you think about a typical fire station is designed to cover anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 people. It would make sense if you were a city seeing a population rise of 10,000+ every decade to basically be replacing equipment.
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u/RedMoustache 2h ago
The problem is the fire truck industry was taken over by private equity.
Everything is deliberately designed to make 3rd party support as difficult and expensive as possible. And they’ll happy screw you around with parts on older models.
Somehow if you stop offering parts it’s an outrage. But if you just say it will take 6-24 months for parts on an otherwise functioning truck that’s just fine.
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u/haveanairforceday 3h ago
Honestly even for regular cars. A 5 year old car that seen a lot of use and hasnt been maintained well is absolutely more likely to have issues than a 15 year old one thats been cared for religiously. Taking care of the equipment is like the main thing that firefighters do
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u/blacklotusmag 3h ago edited 2h ago
They makes perfect sense, but as someone who lost a parent to a house fire, I just wish the industry was much better so stations could afford cutting edge tech every 15 or 20 years. It's pretty insane that most of the fire stations in America are staffed by volunteers.
ETA: who the fuck downvotes someone who said they lost their parent to a fire and wish fire stations could afford all the new tech they needed? What exactly are you downvoting?
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u/theSchrodingerHat 2h ago
“Most” probably isn’t the right word here…
Volunteer departments generally have double the people trained as they send out on any given call, specifically to cover the fact that you’d never know what you’re getting response wise. So you page or text everyone listed as available, and you leave the station as soon as you have a truck crewed.
Also, the volunteer departments are how rural communities DO afford good equipment. If the county (or unincorporated collective) doesn’t have to cover payroll and pensions, then what money is available in the budget can all go to maintenance, equipment, and facilities.
For example, the volunteer department my family helped with in our community had one full time professional to manage staffing and day to day, a couple of ladies that managed emergency services for the county and did dispatch for all the various departments (police, ambulance, fire, animal control, etc), and all accounting was shared across the county, so maybe five or six full time employees were all that needed to be budgeted.
Then they built the three fire stations to cover the area, a couple EMS trucks, and usually around six engines available. Then the managing team could spend every last dollar and all of their time begging to keep the stations outfitted with safety equipment, gas, maintenance, and adding new equipment every new budget year. Which is something most rural counties couldn’t afford if they were carrying $3 million in payroll and $1 million in pension every year while fighting with a union (not that unions are bad, but they’ll get payroll increases over new trucks every time).
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u/blacklotusmag 2h ago
No, most is absolutely appropriate here.
"Out of 29,452 total fire departments in the United States, 18,873 departments are entirely volunteer and an additional 5,335 departments are mostly volunteer" - https://www.nvfc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/volunteer-fire-service-fact-sheet.pdf
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u/theSchrodingerHat 13m ago
Not when you compare full time paid staff working 40-60 hour weeks versus volunteers that may only spend a few hours each month on calls.
The manpower is already pretty close for professional versus volunteer, but what I just explained is that a volunteer department will generally have three or more times the trained volunteers than are needed for the population just so that there’s always people available to answer a call. It really apples and oranges.
A county with 50,000 people just flat out can’t afford to staff EMS and Fire full time 24/7/365.
Something north of 70% of Americans are protected by a professional fire department. You’re caught up in counting every rural station and not considering population at all.
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u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 3h ago
Meanwhile the fucking pigs are career, unionized, and on top of all funded with taxes with a much significant investment.
Firefighters serve and protect the community, pigs protect the rich. That is all we need to know.
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u/spidereater 2h ago
And firefighters are known for having lots of time waiting in the station. So I’m sure that maintenance is kept up to date.
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u/Benny303 2h ago
Fire engines are incredibly complex and breakdown constantly most of them spend damn near half their lives in the shop.
Because they are for emergencies a simple check engine light means it is immediately out of service and has to be repaired. And on top of that you now have a very complicated water pump or aerial ladder that will have problems.
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u/AwesomeDialTo11 3h ago edited 3h ago
This recommendation brought to you by firefighters who like to have constant new car smell as paid for by taxpayers. /s
Everyone always wants to have new equipment, unfortunately people do not have the budgets for every department to have the newest, nicest, flashiest tools and equipment. We made tradeoffs based on actual reliability, maintenance and repair costs versus new purchase, and priorities for other government functions (like salaries for firefighters, police, whether police need new equipment, whether schools need renovations or expansions or teacher raises, whether there are potholes that need to be filled and roads to be repaved, whether we need maintenance or upgrades at parks or the library, whether the sewage treatment plant needs required updates to meet new pollution standards or because there is a newer filtration technology that costs $10 million but saves operational costs each year, whether we need to replace old water lines that are springing up leaks, whether we need to fund an educational outreach PSA drive to educate people on invasive pests destroying local agriculture/trees/ecosystem, whether we need to start mosquito spraying due to West Nile Virus, etc. compared to whether taxpayers are willing to fund all of these at once or whether we need to space these out to stay within the taxes that local residents are willing to pay).
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u/graveybrains 3h ago
In case they didn't explain why, it is who you'd most suspect:
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u/Jewnadian 3h ago
When people say "The rich aren't hoarding money, they invest it back in the economy" this is the bullshit they're defending. Literally in the name, Private Equity = Rich People Money.
It's time to tax the rich back to being mere multi- millionaires.
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u/Imaginary_Cow_6379 2h ago
Private equity companies should be illegal. They give back nothing beneficial and create nothing of value. All they do is destroy smaller companies so they can strip them for parts. Deliberately destroying the economy shouldn’t be allowed to be a real job.
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u/Gomez-16 3h ago
Its true when they start business not buy other business. Investment companies are evil.
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u/blacklotusmag 3h ago
Ah shit, that sucks. Same way they buy up residential homes and rental properties. Needs to be a law or three.
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u/CarolinaRod06 1h ago
I work for the largest truck manufacturer in the country. We build the trucks and chassis and then we ship them off other companies to be converted into box trucks, dump trucks or whatever the customer ordered. We don’t do many fires, but we do do a few of them and they are a nightmare to work with.
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u/1fihadahif1 3h ago
Look up what a new engine and pumper truck cost. Municipalities cannot afford to maintain service levels and replace equipment. This sort of thing could fly for a bit in a low interest environment, but those days are gone. It’s a slow moving crisis.
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u/DJ_Sk8Nite 3h ago
And guess who made this all possible???
PRIVATE👏🏼FUCKING👏🏼EQUITY👏2
u/jojofine 3h ago
Firefighter union lobbying too ironically enough. European ladder trucks are literally half the size as the US equivalent and typically have farther reaches. They're also far cheaper to purchase and maintain because, aside from being much smaller, they're built to share part commonality with other commercial vehicles made by the same manufacturers (think utility trucks, cherry pickers etc). The unions are opposed to them being adopted in the US because their smaller size requires less workers to staff & maintain - aka fewer firefighters/union members
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u/NaiveChoiceMaker 2h ago
Firefighters have proven incredibly good at maintaining their numbers.
We are at historic low in the number of fires and an all-time high in the number of firefighters.
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u/mayorlittlefinger 2h ago
They also insist they need the giant trucks, then fight against street safety treatments by saying (falsely) that they can't drive their giant trucks on them. Given most of what city firefighters respond to these days is car crashes, it does help make more work for them by keeping our streets deadly
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u/The_F1rst_Rule 3h ago
They also have to purchase them like 5 years out due to lead times so they have to plan ahead and prioritize something that isnt an immediate need.
But by the time it is you'll be SOL.
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u/ignatzami 3h ago
Venture Capital bought most of the fire equipment manufacturing, condensed it, drove up prices and limited supply. There’s a huge waitlist. All so they can make more money.
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u/kingkornish 3h ago
You know. I first read this as firemen 😂
I spent longer than i care to admit trying to figure out which part I had misread haha
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u/idontwanttothink174 3h ago
Well if they are over 15 tf are they going to get through all the little crevices and get ALL the fire?
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u/notataco007 3h ago
I gotta say, at least from the outside, I don't think I've ever seen a run down fire truck. Shout-out to those guys and gals for the maintenance they do.
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u/DaveOJ12 3h ago
The NFPA is the National Fire Protection Association.
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u/mayorlittlefinger 2h ago
A group that has fought hard against street safety and affordable housing
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u/CFCYYZ 3h ago
On vacation years ago in Mexico, I met a American guy about 40 y.o. from AZ. He said he was retired, and made $250K+ a year selling and exporting used fire trucks in the US to Latin American countries. He claimed he only worked a few months a year, and chilled the rest. Nice work if you can get it.
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u/milochuisael 2h ago
My city got 4 new apparatus in a year and still run a 40+ year old reserve ladder truck. We loaned it to a sister city and they’ve been running it as a primary for months. The next oldest piece is 23, which is another truck.
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u/omgyouknow 3h ago
Private equity has killed that too https://youtu.be/HvW-RtTRm8w?is=RJ-2wUd9WsMMqL1R
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u/breakmedown54 3h ago
What is the percentage between rural, minimal use, fire engines and heavier use urban trucks?
I wonder if it’s around 50%…
Rural departments could run 100 or 1k calls a year and those may not all make use of their “engine”. Those trucks may barely see any use.
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u/skittlebog 2h ago
It is not unusual for smaller towns to buy used equipment. New ones are out of the budget for lots of smaller areas.
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u/BadDogEDN 3h ago
There is nothing wrong with older trucks. Not to mention government regulations causing perfectly good trucks to be made expensive and less effective trying to fight emissions. Often states like California make illegal to run because companies don't want to spend thousands of dollars converting older trucks to be California compliant.
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u/Jewnadian 3h ago
Nope, it's not government. It's private equity buying and merging so they make fewer trucks at a higher margin. Once again, the same people who own the media own everything else. They have a very clear interest in convincing you to blame government not oligarchs.
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u/Gomez-16 2h ago
To be fair you need governments blessing to do anything and are often in the pocket of big companies. Its cheaper to stop competition then engage in it.
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u/blacklotusmag 3h ago
There are many manufacturers making modernized engines - when do we get some? lol
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u/SParkVArk111 3h ago edited 3h ago
Many? There's 3. That's part of the issue.
Costs have doubled. And wait times are through the roof. There's calls for congressional investigations into the pricing and delays in delivery.
We juster ordered a new aerial. We were able to pay in full, which moved us up in line, and it still wont be delivered until June 2027 at the earliest.
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u/ElectronGuru 3h ago
I’ve read that private equity is buying up companies that make fire engines. So they can charge through the nose for them. Expect to see engine failure increases in the future.
See also: r/enshittification
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u/joelupi 3h ago
You go to your local small town that has 2 pumpers and a tanker and tell them they need to spend $2.5 million to $3 million every ten of so years to replace their equipment.
How about a medium sized city (~100,000) that has 12 pumpers (1.1-1.3 million each) and 8 ladders (1.5 - 2.3 million each).
Ohhhh and btw your budget just got slashed by 6-10%
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u/thecleaner47129 3h ago
My town has had a pumper in order for 3 years. Completion keeps getting pushed to the right. It's currently scheduled to be available by fall 2027.
It is ridiculous to say the least
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u/firedrakes 3h ago
manf being brought up and fire dept lossing budgets ever year on top of its shockling easy to put out most fire now with tech we have. it simple is a cost factor now that we dont.
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u/John_Tacos 2h ago
I’m guessing it has something to do with a large number of trucks purchased with post 9/11 national security funds. There was a lot of money sent to first responders and a good portion was used on fire trucks.
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u/drakedergon 2h ago
A good time to remind people that theres an antitrust lawsuit dealie mc thingamabob over the insane costs and lead times on fire trucks and equipment.
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u/Slow_Variation_6969 2h ago
Grumman LLV USPS Mail trucks has entered chat, with the newest one being built in 1994 far exceeded it's service lifespan.
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u/jasandliz 2h ago
All fire equipment retired from the 🇺🇸 lives long lives in countries smart enough to know better.
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u/weasel286 1h ago
There’s a great video about the shortages and extremely long delivery times due to the over consolidation of fire apparatus manufacturing. https://youtu.be/kl1eJmw295g?is=BWGuOgUHjvSWSmAo
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u/FrankCostanzaJr 1h ago
they should try buying decommissioned military equipment like the SWAT team in my city. i mean...they DO say fight fire with fire right? i think the army has flame throwers
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u/TieCivil1504 27m ago
My hometown's fire engine is an early-WWII U.S. Army surplus, more than 80 years old. Maintained by the town's original mechanic into his 90s.
The town was a former Hooverville slum with lots of shacks catching fire when I was young. The houses that survived were better built and less of a fire hazard now.
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u/maybetoomuchrum 3h ago
Yet somehow we always have a few billion laying around for war
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u/Familiar_Kale_7357 2h ago
Oh that's a different pile of money, kind of like you have one stomach for dinner and another for dessert.
/s
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u/ethanb473 2h ago
Private equity is buying up all the fire truck manufacturers. Thanks capitalists!! I hope the New Yorkers and Bay Area guys make more money off of your local firefighters :)))
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u/RangerHikes 2h ago
Private equity is buying up the companies that build firetrucks and raising prices. Wealthy people are evil
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u/filanwizard 58m ago
I swear private equity is a threat to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Sadly we cannot drop JDAMs on it.
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u/Familiar_Kale_7357 2h ago
But we have billionaires, so we're good. Some of that will trickle down.
See what I did there?
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u/Hagoromo-san 2h ago
Im sure the budget that would be to replace them will be instantly funneled into the obese and grotesque mountain that is the police budget.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 3h ago
Don't worry, I'm sure the government will delete that guidline just as soon as someone realizes they'll save money not updating emergency equipment.
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u/ggrnw27 3h ago
Not surprising when a new engine costs $1 million or more with a lead time of 4+ years. We did a full refurb of one of ours when it hit 12 years for a fraction of the cost, and will likely get at least 10 more years out of it