You can buy a fire truck on Craigslist!
After waiting for over a month, I received an email from the Kinloch Fire Department with the news that the title was proceeding, and although it would be another few weeks before they had it, I could go ahead and buy the truck. Sweet! We headed over there on our way to the lake and exchanged cash for the title. Kari got to see the truck for the first time, which quashed any hopes that we were kidding about buying a fire truck. I told them we’d pick the truck up on our way back home, and asked if they could kill off the yellow jackets that were living in one of the cabinets.
On Monday we stopped at the fire station on our way home. The chief told me that they needed the inverter out of the truck, but they traded me a siren for the inverter. I didn’t know what an inverter was, so I was pretty stoked about scoring a siren! To get home, I needed to go down a busy interstate, and having never driven a fire truck before, we decided it would be best if the kids ride with Kari and follow me home. One of the firemen showed Alli how to put the truck into pump mode, and work everything on the pump panel. It was too much info for me to follow. We took a couple of pictures with the firemen, and off I went in our new fire truck.
When we got home, I was able to give the kids and Kari a ride. Kari was not interested in driving.
Not really knowing what to do with it, I just drove it around like a pickup truck. We didn’t have the title yet, and couldn’t get license plates, but as it turns out, you would have to be doing some pretty dumb shit to get pulled over in a fire truck. No one even looked for license plates.
Insurance turned out to be kind of expensive. I still think they could have insured it as a classic vehicle, but instead they kept telling me “Sean, it weighs 26,000 pounds. If you crash into something, it is going to be bad.”
Kari didn’t really even like riding in it. We’d take it to the store and on errands, and she was embarrassed by people’s gawking and confusion when they saw a normal family driving it. The kids and I loved it and the horn was spectacular when we needed to use it. The siren was cool to, but I learned why there is a siren brake button on the dash. When the siren spools up, it is just a heavy fan, so when you let off the switch it takes a looooong time to spool back down, and the brake is broken.
The fell Jake right to sleep in spite of the ridiculous noise level. Kari brought a catalog to look at, so she didn’t have to see people looking at her.
Now we need to get caps for some of the inlets and outlets so we can fill it up with water. If the pump really works, that is another added bonus.
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