Dorchester Fire Dept. Gets Mentioned For Its Bargain Hunting

In a recent story by the Fremont Tribune, Dorchester's Volunteer Fire Dept. gets an honorable mention for its bargain hunting for new emergency vehicles. The story details how fire departments around Nebraska are snapping up bargains

"Across the state, volunteer fire department interest in the Forest Service’s Fire Equipment Shop, located south of Mead, is picking up. The shop finds local fire fighting uses for federally owned equipment from across the United States, including military vehicles, when the federal government is finished with them. The vehicles are loaned to volunteer departments, who pay only the transportation costs unless they request other repairs or modifications from the full-service Fire Equipment Shop. Departments modify the vehicles to their needs, maintain them and then return them to the Forest Service when they’re finished with them. The program has about 435 pieces of equipment, valued at around $27 million, on loan to more than 200 departments across Nebraska, said Lou Sieber, equipment manager at the shop.

According to the Tribune's story, Sieber "likes to tell the story of a 2006 fire truck he placed at Dorchester. It cost $4,500 to get it to Nebraska, and the department spent about $55,000 fixing it up. To buy a similar truck brand new would cost $200,000. 'If you take a $200,000 fire truck and use it for 20 years, then you sell it, how much are you going to get? I feel I’m being fairly generous at $35,000, so it costs $165,000 to use that truck for 20 years,' Sieber said. 'If you take an equivalent truck and spend $60,000 on it and use it for 20 years, then you give it back, which was the cheaper truck to have?'”