The Mountain Home Fire Department accepted delivery on its newest fire truck Tuesday.
The 2015 Sutphen ladder truck arrived on a flatbed trailer from Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus in Union Grove, Ala. The truck, which measures 47.5 feet long, had to be unloaded at the Street Department office on Highway 201 North and then driven downtown to its new home at Fire Station No. 1.
The Sutphen, which had previously been in service with a fire department in Schenectady, N.Y., replaces a 1984 Grumman AerialCat ladder truck that has been in service with the city since 1987.
Grumman Emergency Products, a subsidiary of aircraft manufacturer Grumman Aerospace Corporation, closed its doors in 1992. Because of that, replacement parts for the 37-year-old the AerialCat are almost nonexistent. When the Sutphen was purchased in May 2020, it was believed Mountain Home’s AerialCat was one of only three still on duty in the United States.
The AerialCat was sold to Scrap Daddies Metals in the spring and turned over to the recycler Monday.
Mountain Home Fire Chief Kris Quick talks about the AerialCat.
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Quick talks about the Sutphen.
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The Sutphen has a 100-foot platform ladder capable of lifting 1,000 pounds. It seats six in its cab and has a 2,000-gallon pumping capacity. The truck also has a backup camera, something that will come in handy when trying to maneuver the 67,000-pound vehicle.
The 2015 Sutphen cost the city $799,000 and comes with a five-year, bumper-to-bumper warranty guaranteed by Brindlee Fire Apparatus.
Quick says a new ladder truck can cost between $1.3 and $1.5 million.
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The Sutphen was purchased with money generated by the city’s three-eighths of a percent public safety sales tax, whose collections are shared between the police and fire departments.
In addition to the ladder truck, The Mountain Home Fire Department has used its portions of that tax money to purchase a pumper truck, a rescue unit and a brush truck.
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Last year the public safety sales tax generated $2.7 million for the police and fire departments. So far this year, it has generated $1.1 million.
The city is required to have a 100-foot ladder in the fleet to maintain the city’s Class 3 ISO rating. Baxter Regional Medical Center is the tallest building in town and reaches a height just short of 100 feet tall.
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