Wednesday, January 11, 2012

By the numbers

Below you will find the maintenance cost for the current fleet over the past 12 years. In comparison all the engines and FRVs cost the taxpayers $2,071,335. On the other hand the Quints, which are 10 years* newer than the engines cost $5,840,698.

Newer is a very relative term. Our oldest engine that is still in service was purchased in 1989 and is used by the fire training academy. The newest front line engine still responding to calls is Engine 25 which was purchased in 1992.

The oldest quint was purchased in 1996, and is Quint 14. Quint 14 is completely different than all other Quints. Quint 14 was an experimental project before the city bought all  Pierce Quints, and decided to go with the complete Quint concept in 1998. During this purchase the fire department bought 18 new Quints.

So trucks that were purchased 4 years prior to buying the Quints are still responding to emergencies to our citizens and are also relied on as replacement apparatus or when a Quint goes out on repair. These are costing the taxpayers $3,769,363 less to maintain. How much more are the new Quints going to cost in maintenance cost over new engines?

14 comments:

  1. I think this info. is great. This really shows the expense of a Quint vs. an Engine. Most of us in the RFD already know that the Quint concept is a waste of taxpayers money. There is no need for this concept in the City of Richmond. We as a group need to find a way to get the citizens of Richmond to get on this blog and get the info. they need to know.

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  2. Is this normal to allow fire apparatus to get that old?

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  3. No, other urban departments replace units every 5-7 years.

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  4. Lets see 20 Quint Co's. 14 already had one, so the city bought 19 Quints in 1998.

    Engine 13 has the newest Seagrave which is a 1994, it was Engine 1's piece.

    Engine 25 has a blown motor.

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  5. The question is this: Does all of this added expense provide any benefit to the citizens of Richmond? Do they realize any gain from all of this, or, do they actual see a drop in service? Imagine if those questions were asked and answered honestly before making purchases, and how the department would look as a result.

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  6. what about the comment made by his greatness " we are not ordering anything else until Fitch and Assoc. finishes their report and recommendations " 5 days later 2 more quints and a rescue engine ordered .......can you say liar or bold face liar. Oh by the way the Fitch report is to be handed in and complete by March, about when the 2 additional new quints and rescue engine are delivered.

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  7. While I have no information that could dispute the numbers above, I seriously challenge some of this information. Let's use Quint 5 as an example. How often do we ever hear that truck in-service? I think someone said it was out something like 60% of the days last year. I just don't agree with $182,000. I'm thinking much higher. It would be interesting to know what (if any) filters were applied to this data.

    Food for thought...

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  8. These numbers are only through 2010, so yes, it would be considerably more for this past year however we have not been able to obtain that data yet.

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  9. Banksy, can you provide information on departments that are replacing their rigs at the 5-7 year mark? Even FDNY has 10 year old rigs in front line service. Hell, Memphis and Louisville still have THIRTY-year-old rigs in the reserve fleet.

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  10. Yes while they have older rigs as all department do, they are not all purchased at the same time as the quints were. They are continually purchased on a 5-7 year basis and cycled through the department

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  11. Last I knew, the target replacement age was 7 to 8 years in the FDNY. Ask most mfg.'s and theey will tell you expect about that amount of time out of front line units in our environment. This is purely for front line though, reserve pieces are a different story. Also with FDNY keep in mind the effects 9/11 had on their fleet. I'm sure that changed many factors.

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  12. You could look at the other side and say something is wrong with the maintenance process. Does the city shop handle the maintenance? That might be the first problem. They are not exactly known for quality work. For a fair comparison, the FD would need to contract the maint. to a large truck facility and compare the cost over some time. I would imagine a heavy truck shop would do better work and be less expensive. I don't know a lot about maintaining a fire truck, but I can tell you for that kind of money, I'd just buy you a used engine every year and throw it away when it broke down. Seems cheaper than some of the figures on that spreadsheet. Also seem a lot cheaper to put 2 FFs in a suburban to first respond medical calls, and stop sending them on so much BS. That would reduce a lot of wear on the larger pieces. If a real fire comes in, they can always clear up and meet the other crew members on scene.

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    1. the idea of suburbans has been tried in several other departments throughout the nation as a way to reduce operating costs. Problem is most have returned to a fire truck based service. Also there are no other departments that operate a total quint with reduced staffing numbers that have explored this suburban concept. I do not believe that this would fit into our system however as with anything you do not know until you try. If this is something that Fitch ends up recommending then it would be nice to see 1 station try the idea and then evaluate it before it goes city wide.

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  13. We tried this in th city at station 14 years ago...the suburban did.not work and was done away with..my nameis zack.and I approve of this post.

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