Editor’s Opinion Ed Ballam
I filled up the gas tank on my SUV the other day and stared as the digital numbers raced past the $50 mark, stopping at the $80 mark, the limit the station was allowing on debit cards.
The tank wasn’t full, but I didn’t bother to run it again to top it off. I had spent enough anyway.
I am not about to step into the fray about why the fuel prices are so high. That’s a debate fraught with polarizing dialog that can sour a conversation very quickly. But it made me stop and think about the diesel trucks in my fire station and the cost of fuel, which bounces around six bucks a gallon—at least at the time I wrote this—and how fire trucks get probably six to eight miles per gallon on a good day.
Those thoughts led me to start thinking about the electric apparatus I saw at the Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC) International 2022 a few months ago.
Has the time for electric fire trucks come? Maybe.
At FDIC, I was confronted with the concept front and center when a marketing person asked me directly, “Would you buy one?”
Gulp. How was I going to answer that? I have studied them, written about them, but being ask if I personally would buy one was startling. Before hearing that question, electric trucks were theoretical, a concept. With that question, it was suddenly a reality.
I answered honestly and said I’d have to learn more and give some serious reflection on how it would work in my location. I didn’t say no because a big part of me wants to say yes.
During one of the presentations of electric trucks at FDIC, Roger Lackore, senior director of product development for REV Fire Group engineering, put a sharp point on the issue.
Lackore asked whether firefighters wanted to be involved early with the development of electric apparatus and help create the technology or be forced into doing something 10 years from now when who knows what federal regulations might require regarding vehicle exhaust emissions.
It’s a good point. If the past 10 years are any indication, emissions and how to control and eventually eliminate them have been on the front burner for all apparatus manufacturers. At this point, electric vehicles are the technology that looks most promising.
I also talked to the engineers and representatives at the Pierce booth in Lucas Oil Stadium during the show. Pierce had two electric trucks on display, one that’s been in service with the Madison (WI) Fire Department and another headed to Portland, OR, after the show.
Retired Madison Chief Steven Davis was at the Pierce booth to talk about his department’s experience with the Volterra. Interestingly, he said his department was not initially in favor of the electric fire truck concept, but the city councilors were, and the decision was made to put them in service in the city.
It didn’t take the firefighters long to realize they had a winner and the concept works. Chief Davis says the Madison firefighters now love the truck. It has exceeded expectations and it’s in the busiest house in Madison. Although he retired a couple of weeks before FDIC, Davis was intimately involved with the specifications and its roll out. He too is now a believer in electric apparatus.
LA City is also onboard with electric apparatus and Rosenbauer had its offering at the show for all to see and experience. It was yet another iteration of the wave of the future and it seemed well received given the number of people who got up close and personal to experience it first-hand.
I think back to tales we’ve all heard about the move away from horse-drawn apparatus to internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. That shift caused a ruckus back in the day, so we are told. The argument then, as it is now, is reliability. How can a mechanical thing be as reliable as the tried-and-true horses? Outside of fly-ridden horse dung here and there on the city streets, there were no problems with horses. Right?
How about the more recent transition from gasoline-powered apparatus to diesel fuel? Firefighters were worried the diesel engines would not turn the pumps fast enough to deliver the kind of water pressure needed for effective firefighting.
But guess what, both of those transitions happened with the requisite complaints and whining from resistant firefighters. And we are clearly better off for it.
My guess is electric-powered apparatus is yet another evolution in the fire service. I predict that there will be two responses to the concept—those who will immediately embrace it and those who will be dragged in kicking and screaming, holding onto the steering wheel of a 1958 Mack because there’s nothing wrong with the way we’ve always done it.
Is electricity the ultimate power for our apparatus? History shows us it is likely not. But, for now, electricity is the wave of the future and we should get onboard. It just feels like the right thing to do and sometimes we have to have faith in the technology. After all, if we think about it, it’s how we got to where we are now. And that’s a long way from bucket brigades.
