BY TRACY LEE TATE
Special to the Times
When the Florida Legislature gave the Union County Fire Department a $305,000 appropriation this session, Fire and Rescue Director Toby Witt and Fire Coordinator Paul McDavid knew what needed to be done with some of the funds. The county’s two current brush trucks are 17 years old and in need of replacement, so that was decided to be one of the uses of the funds. Interestingly, the two trucks would be the first brand-new fire apparatus purchased for the department in 17 years.
The search began to find two trucks that would meet the need within the time the money had to be spent (the deadline was July 2024). The supply chain issue made it impossible to get a chassis from the factory (the main part of the vehicle before it is made into a brush truck) within the timeframe. There is about a 20-month waiting list for the chassis needed to create the trucks, then the additional wait for them to be customized to purpose by smaller, private companies. McDavid reached out to his list of contacts with the U.S. Forestry Service, made during his career, and found two either ready to go or close to finished. The one that was ready was located in Bartow, Florida, and simply required a day trip to pick it up. Word came that the second truck was ready in Provo, Utah, and McDavid was in a training class. The shipping would have cost the county $4,000. Witt said he checked and found that he could go after the truck for much less, about $1,300, so he decided to do that.
Witt flew out of Jacksonville at 7 a.m. on Sun., Dec. 10, headed to Salt Lake City with a plane change and layover on the way. He arrived at 2 p.m. their time (two hours behind Florida in the Mountain Time Zone). He then took an Uber to Provo and checked into a motel to get a good night’s sleep. He was at the dealer’s shop at 9 a.m. when they opened the following day and left with the truck at 10:30. He drove straight through Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, making it to Amarillo, Texas, at 3 a.m. and slept in the truck in a rest area for about 3.5 hours. When he woke up, he drove the rest of the way and said he was home in bed by 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Dec. 13.
The trucks are now located at the Union County EMS station in Lake Butler, awaiting appropriate decals to mark them. The decal packages will be a newer style than that on the old trucks.
Both trucks are four-wheel drives with crew cabs and are designed to do the same duties as the trucks used by forestry. They are both (the chassis) made by Dodge. In Union County, these trucks will be used not just for brush fires but also on other calls. Each will carry extraction gear and medical supplies that will enable them to answer all sorts of calls. They will eliminate the need to send out a big fire truck (saving fuel) and can go where other units cannot – providing fuel savings and a faster response time. Both trucks are rated at 16 mpg.
The cost of the trucks was well within the parameters of what was allowed in the appropriation, including Witt’s odyssey to get the truck from Utah. The Utah truck cost $165,000 plus the pick-up costs, while the Bartow truck cost $139,500. The important point is that both were purchased well before the spending date for the appropriation and will be in service to the county in a short time.
