BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
Texas’ Pineland Volunteer Fire Department has put two former military trucks into service as firefighting apparatus thanks to Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services and the Department of Defense Firefighting Property Program.
The FPP is a partnership between DLA Disposition Services, which collects excess military property, and the U.S. Forest Service, which places the equipment into the hands of firefighters in rural communities.
In the Lone Star State, the program is administered by Texas A&M Forest Service.
Joseph Lane is fire chief of the Pineland Volunteer Fire Department. He described the 84 square miles in East Texas that his department is responsible for as rugged and wooded.
The first truck the department acquired from the program was a one-and-a-quarter-ton pickup truck used to fight pasture and forest fires.
But it was the second truck, Lane said, a two-and-a-half-ton beast, that is truly a multi-purpose truck.
Lane said the department placed a slip-in 400-gallon skid unit into the truck’s bed, essentially converting it into a fire truck. The unit is removable, allowing the truck to also take on the role of high-water rescue vehicle when needed.
“The trucks have been life savers,” Lane said. He noted that the department has some nice brush trucks, but they have fiberglass bodies and sometimes simply getting them into position to fight a fire can seriously damage the fiberglass.
But when it comes to his department’s excess military trucks, “They are godsends, because they are battle trucks,” Lane said, “You don’t have to worry about the fiberglass on them breaking or cracking – you can put them wherever.”
“I hate to say it, but we can mistreat them without having the worry of ‘Oh my God, what did we just tear up?’” Lane said. “At the end of the day, you bring them back to the shop, get a mallet and beat the dent back out of them, get a can of spray paint and paint the color back you scratched off. That is what they are designed for. They are the down and dirty brush trucks that we needed.”
“They are not the prettiest trucks in my fleet,” Lane said. “But when it’s a woods fire or grass fire or something like that, everybody else grabs the nice pretty trucks that go down the road. I grab that one and a quarter ton truck and go.”