Parting with our dear old fire truck :( and a recap of ownership. – You should get one!
Let me say first – I definitely, sincerely, recommend that you buy yourself a fire truck. If you can find a good, solid, diesel, automatic transmission fire truck with less than 100k miles for less than $5k and preferably from a fire department, that way you know maintenance was done regularly – buy it, have fun, sell it before it breaks.
Since we bought ours we have had a lot of fun driving it around like a big pickup truck, spraying water, and taking a trip to Lake of the Ozarks in it.
I let the kids ride on the back in our neighborhood They are behind the tires, so if they fall off they’ll just roll a little.
Going to school – Dev wanted to take the Trans Am, and Jake heckling me about rolling a stop sign.
It is awesome.
After owning ours for about a year and a half, I decided it was time to sell it. I normally keep it at my work, outside, and as such it is starting to show. Being 30 years old, the fire department kept it in pretty good condition, and parked it inside all of the time, and washed and waxed it regularly. We, on the other hand, are pretty lazy about all of that. I think we’ve washed it three times. I do not want to wax it. Ever. Also, the heater core is leaking, so I could have either fixed it – probably not happening, deal with hot antifreeze leaking onto the cab floor – not cool, or turn a valve off and not have any heat – brrrr. So onto Craigslist it went. Interestingly, most of the inquiries I received were from small fire departments. Some of the small farm towns have trucks that are smaller, older, or in worse shape than ours. One caller wanted to buy it and take it to Mexico, where his dad owns a business that fixes up older fire trucks and sells them to fire departments in Mexico. The buyer, was a volunteer fire man from southern Illinois that just thought it would be cool to have a fire truck. I agree. So off it went for $4,600 which covered my entire cost of owning it – insurance, oil change/maintenance by the diesel place nearby, licence plates, and new steer tires ($1,100). And that is that. Maybe we’ll buy another some day.
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