Hodgdon voters OK fire truck purchase

By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
    HODGDON — The town will soon be getting a “new” tanker truck for its fire department. Voters authorized the town to take $23,000 from the town’s surplus account to purchase a 1999 Volvo tanker truck during a special town meeting Oct. 10 at the Mill Pond School.
    About 16 residents attended the special town meeting. Town Manager Jim Griffin said the vehicle will be used to replace one of the town’s existing tanker trucks, but which vehicle was uncertain. The town presently has two tankers, a 1974 vehicle and 1980 truck, in its fleet.
    The town currently has about $350,000 in its surplus account.
    Griffin said the town was able to locate a 1999 Volvo tanker at Whited Ford in Bangor. The tanker previously served as a Dysarts fuel truck and comes with a 3,800-gallon tank.
    “It’s a little bit bigger than what we are used to, but it will fit into the barn without having to add on,” Griffin said. “It’s a good, solid vehicle.”
    The vehicle has 486,000 miles on the odometer and 10,193 hours of logged time on its meter. Griffin said that logged time, time in which the vehicle was spent idling, but pumping fuel while out on deliveries, translates into an additional 350,000 miles. Therefore, the vehicle has roughly 840,000 registered miles.
    “I don’t think the hours pumping are severe on the truck,” Griffin said. “We checked around to see what kind of life one can get out of these engines before work needs to be done. We found these engines typically last between 800,000-1.2 million miles before you have to touch them.”
    Griffin added the Hodgdon Fire Department would typically puts less than 1,000 miles a year on its tankers, so he anticipated this unit to be in the fleet for many years to come.
    Before it can be put into service, about $8,000 will need to be spent refurbishing it, including changing the color from “Dysarts’ green” to “fire engine red.” The tanker also needs new tires. The additional funds for the refurbishing will come from the fire department’s equipment reserve account, which contains $12,000.
    “A tanker is the one thing we need at the fire station,” Griffin said. “It’s something we have been looking at for the last couple of years. The last fire we went to we had an issue with one of our tankers and the last training session we had, one of them never made it.”
    Once the mortgage for the fire station is paid for in 2015, the money that typically has gone to pay for that building will be used to replenish the town’s surplus account.