Bedford Fire Department to Purchase $2.4 Million Ladder Truck

October 23, 2024

A replacement ladder truck for the Bedford Fire Department was unanimously (7-0) approved by City Council Tuesday. The new $2.4 million truck will replace the oldest of two ladder trucks the Department operates.

Originally posted as a consent item on the meeting’s agenda, Mayor Dan Cogan moved the proposal for the new ladder truck to the “new business” section of the agenda to allow council members to hear more detail and to ask questions.

The truck being replaced is a “2008 Spartan Rear-Mount Aerial” with more than 84,000 miles on the odometer, according to the agenda. In addition, the agenda states, the current truck suffers from “increasing maintenance costs, thus making it increasingly unreliable.”

The new ladder truck, the agenda states, is a “Spartan 100-foot Mid-Mount Platform on a Gladiator Chassis,” which is estimated to take 21 months to deliver and will be supplied by Metro Fire Apparatus Specialists.

The Bedford Fire department’s Division Chief of Training Frank Tamayo stated in a presentation to Council that Metro was selected because other suppliers would take up to 42 months to deliver and that the Metro truck “mirrors what we already have as a fleet,” which should help “make the mechanics and breakdowns a lot less.” Otherwise, he said, the price from another company would be about the same. Metro is based in Houston, but has a North Texas office in Mansfield, according to the company’s website.

Photo of a Spartan 100-foot Mid-Mount Platform on a Gladiator Chassis courtesy of Spartan Emergency Response

The funds for the purchase of the new truck, according to the agenda, are coming from $12.2 million allocated to Bedford from the “Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds,” through “the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA).” The agenda explains that, “in total, small cities have been allocated approximately $1.38 billion” from the program.

According to Bedford Communications Diector Molly Fox, after the purchase of the new ladder truck, there is still expected to be $1.5 million remaining from the ARPA program, which the City “intends” to fully “obligate” by Arpa’s December 31 deadline, at the end of this year. All of the funds, she said, would need to be spent by ARPA’s deadline of December 31 of 2026.

The purchase of the ladder truck, the agenda said, is part of an overall $3 million package that includes “parks equipment” and “various city facility improvements.” The purchase also comes a little more than a month after Council approved $960,000, also from the ARPA funds, as well as insurance money, to replace a pumper truck, as reported by the Bedford Journal Project on September 16. The pumper truck was “totaled” by an oncoming SUV in May, earlier this year, on Airport Freeway while assisting with another incident.

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