Inflation and supply chain issues hit the price of pumper fire trucks hard, with the city’s latest tender coming in at a total cost of $1.46 million, far exceeding the $750,000 budgeted in 2022.
With their hands considered pretty well tied, the city’s elected officials greenlit the purchase of two such trucks at this newly inflated price during last week’s city council meeting.
“It would be counterproductive for us not to support this,” Ward 7 Coun. Natalie Labbée said at the time, noting that city council members have been striving to bring fire services up to date.
“We have six (pumper trucks) that are past the age and their life expectancy, and if we kick it down the road we will just have more that will fall into that category,” Ward 6 Coun. René Lapierre said.
The purchase of the two pumper trucks was approved in 2022 and 2023, when a respective budget of $750,000 and $950,000 was allotted by city council.
Deputy chief Nathan Melin described the cost jump of recent years as “unprecedented,” and to such a degree that additional city council approval was required to award tenders.
The additional funds are to be drawn from reserves.
There isn’t much resale value for fire apparatus beyond its life expectancy. Ladder trucks are the most expensive apparatus, and Melin said a recent used ladder truck sold for $12,000.
Prior to 2020, the annual increase in the cost of pumper trucks had been three to five per cent annually, Melin reported to city council.
In 2020, Greater Sudbury Fire Services purchased three KME pumper trucks at a cost of $788,010 per apparatus. Between then and now, the price per truck had jumped by approximately $600,000.
Earlier this year, Cummings announced they are discontinuing the current standard diesel engine, which Melin said has forced the municipality to upgrade to the new Cummins X12 engine alongside other upgrades, which tacked on an additional $100,000.
Although there’s little the city can do when it comes to these rising costs, Greater Sudbury Fire Services assistant deputy chief Craig Lawrence told Sudbury.com they are doing their best to ensure they get the most out of the vehicles they are cleared to purchase.
The city currently maintains a fleet of 22 front-line pumper fire trucks and five reserve pumper fire trucks. Of these trucks, eight are over the age of 20 (six front-line trucks and two reserve trucks).
For a neighbourhood to be classified as served by its nearest fire station, its front-line apparatus needs to be 15 years or younger, while reserve apparatus cannot exceed 20 years (among other requirements, such as staffing levels).
This, according to the Fire Underwriters Survey.
The National Fire Protection Association echoes these numbers in their best practices.
Even in the event the city were to pare down its number of stations down from 23 to the 15 originally proposed, Lawrence said the city would need to continue purchasing one new truck per year, which is their long-term capital plan.
(As it stands, the city’s plan is to maintain 17 stations, with city council voting earlier this year to retain the Beaver Lake and Skead emergency services stations).
New trucks will cycle through the city’s fire stations, from the career stations they are most commonly used, down through some of the lesser-used volunteer stations.
“So at the end (when they hit 20 years), if one gets cycled to Beaver Lake, it’s going to have 150,000 kilometres on it, not 20,000,” Lawrence said, noting this has been the case in the past.
The back end of new trucks will be standardized so they all look pretty well the exact same, with their components in the same locations so as to not slow down firefighters dealing with the cycling of machines, he said.
“When a firefighter comes in, when they open up that back compartment, it's the same equipment in the same spot,” he said.
The previous batch of three pumper trucks were purchased in 2019, and faced what Melin described as “significant issues in manufacturing due to the pandemic,” which resulted in a delivery date of December 2021.
Warranty issues and safety recalls delayed their deployment to mid-2022.
With the city striving for consistency between apparatus in subsequent purchases, Lawrence said they’ve had to weigh mandatories against making things so specific they limit the number of bidders.
A bid solicitation issued on Jan. 19 closed March 28 with one bid at $1.41 million, which was non-compliant and disqualified.
Another bid solicitation was issued on July 17, and closed Sept. 27 with two compliant bids. The higher of the two bids ($1.53 million) was disqualified for not meeting all mandatory requirements, leaving Brampton-based Dependable Truck & Tank Ltd. as the winning bidder at $1.46 million.
The vote by city council to approve the two new pumper trucks was near-unanimous, with only Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini voting against it.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
