by Dennis Dalman
The St. Joseph Fire Department will get a new fire-engine truck but not until late 2025 or early 2026.
A contract for the truck was agreed to recently with “Fire Safety” company of Rochester to manufacture the truck at a cost of $848,987, said Sartell Fire Chief Peter Kedrowski.
The Sartell City Council at its June 26 meeting agreed by unanimous vote (5-0) to allocate $900,000 for the fire truck. After the cost of building the truck (the $848,987 amount agreed to in the contract), the rest of the city’s allocated funds (about $50,000) will be used to add necessary equipment to the truck, Kedrowski stated in an email to the Newsleader.
Kedrowski noted the fire-engine truck on order is the first truck dispatched to the scene of a fire. That current truck in the fire department is now 16 years old and will be 19 years old by the time the new replacement arrives. That kind of truck should be replaced every 20 years, Kedrowski noted.
The long wait to get the new fire-engine truck can be attributed to supply-chain issues, he noted in his July 12 email response to the Newsleader.
