Story, photo by Steve Nash / Special Contributor to BrownwoodNews.com

EARLY – The Early Fire Department will begin the process of ordering a new fire truck, at a cost of $998,824, to replace an existing 18-year-old fire truck.

Early City Council members Tuesday night authorized Fire Chief Chad Hill to issue a purchase order to a company called Metro Fire for the truck, which will be built over a 10-month period in South Dakota.

Outfitting the truck typically costs $75,00 to $100,000, City Administrator Tony Aaron said.

“The fire truck that we’re looking to replace is our first-out engine,” Aaron said. So the current fire truck that we have in service is an 18-year-old engine, and so it’s time to replace that.

“We’ve been considering replacing this for a couple of years and preparing financially to do that. A couple years ago when we decided to buy the ladder truck, we also made the decision that we were going to have to replace this engine. So we’ve built into our budget the ability to pay for that.”

The city will borrow money from government capital, and city already has the money budgeted to pay for the debt service, Aaron said. “So, no additional tax increase or anything will go to pay for that,” Aaron said.

The annual payment on a 20-year debt would be about $81,000, and about $91,000 on a 15-year debt, Aaron said.

“We’re not deciding that today, but I wanted to give you a snapshot of where we are right now,” he said.

Early Fire Chief Chad Hill said the department will be ordering a 2026 Spartan chassis with a 500-horsepower engine and 1,000-gallon water capacity. “This truck is what they call a line truck,” Hill said.

“It’s got all the high-level LEDs, the backup cameras. All the airbags are inside the chassis. It’s top line, it really is.”

The truck is expected to be in service for 20 years, Hill said.