Southwest Washington fire officials face skyrocketing costs to replace aging vehiclesSubscriber Exclusive

In April 2020, just one month into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vancouver Fire Department replaced one of its aging fire engines with a new rig that cost $614,000. Today, that same fire engine, built by the same manufacturer to the same specifications, will cost Vancouver taxpayers $972,000 and take twice as long to arrive.

Skyrocketing costs and wait times for fire apparatus have forced fire officials throughout the country, including those in Southwest Washington, to reevaluate how they operate.

“It has impacted our capital replacement budget for apparatus a lot and forced us to really look at our fleet,” Vancouver’s interim Fire Chief Nathan Leek said. “We’ve delayed the replacement of vehicles and decided not to replace some vehicles that probably should have been replaced.”

Other Clark County fire chiefs are facing similar concerns.

Camas-Washougal Fire Department Chief Cliff Free recently compared contracts for his department’s fire engine replacements and found that, since 2015, the costs have been climbing rapidly, going from $509,000 in 2015 to $741,000 in 2022 to $910,000 in 2024. The fire chief also reached out to Pierce, the fire engine manufacturer that has produced Camas-Washougal’s other engines, and found that the same rig he ordered in 2024 for $910,000 would now cost $1.1 million, not including sales taxes.

“It’s a serious issue that we’ve had to contend with,” Free said. “Historically, we extend the life of an engine as long as we possibly can and wring as much life out of it as we can — that’s running an efficient shop — but when you hit an unexpected delay of three years, it can put you in a very vulnerable situation.”

Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue Fire Chief John Nohr and Clark County Fire District 6 Fire Chief Darryl Hebert have experienced similar challenges when ordering new engines to replace vehicles that have reached the end of their lifespan.

“But we’ve got to come up with the money,” Nohr said. “You have to have fire engines to respond. That’s our duty to the community. It just means we have to pull money from other programs or delay other capital station repairs.”

Hebert agreed and said it makes budgeting for fire apparatus replacements difficult.

“We do everything we can to get those prices down,” he said. “We look at every corner, every cabinet and often give up on some things.”

Hebert said his fire district even opted to buy a used fire truck from a fire department in Maryland and drive it across the country to Clark County to save money and avoid a two- to three-year wait time. Officials in Fire District 6, which serves Hazel Dell, Lake Shore, Felida, Salmon Creek, Fairgrounds and Mount Vista, may soon adjust its emergency vehicle replacement policies to base the timeline more on each individual vehicle’s wear and tear versus years in use, Hebert said.

“We want to make sure they’re safe, and we’re very fortunate to have a great mechanic,” Hebert said, “but it’s really a balance.”

Nohr has had to make similar compromises.

In 2022, Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue, which serves 125 square miles in north Clark County and south Cowlitz County, including the Cowlitz Indian Reservation and cities of La Center, Ridgefield and Woodland, received two new fire engines, Nohr said. The emergency vehicles, which were built to specifications necessary for firefighting in more rural areas that may not have access to a fire hydrant, took a little over two years to build and cost $633,000 each. When the department ordered the same apparatus in 2024, the cost had gone up to $940,000, Nohr said.

So when it came time to buy a new ladder truck, Nohr balked at the $1.8 million price tag and opted to buy another truck — one already in production but without the exact specifications Clark-Cowlitz normally would have wanted — for $1.19 million and save taxpayers more than $600,000.

As fire departments try to extend the life of emergency vehicles as long as possible to avoid shelling out over $1 million for a fire engine that cost half as much just five years ago, maintenance costs start to creep up, said Free, of the Camas-Washougal department.

“That’s the other unfortunate thing,” Free said. “Maintenance costs go up exponentially when the length of service increases.”

Push for investigation

On Sept. 10, during a federal hearing on the escalating costs of fire and other emergency vehicles, the International Association of Fire Chiefs testified to some of the causes behind the cost and wait time escalations.

Prior to the pandemic, the group said, there was relative stability in the fire vehicle market, with most fire apparatus manufacturers delivering new fire engines in eight to 12 months. The pandemic and its related supply chain issues caused costs and manufacturing times to escalate, the association told federal officials, with delivery time for a new engine increasing to 25-28 months.

“Manufacturers faced challenges in purchasing chassis, microchips, wiring harnesses and other components of fire apparatus. Because the fire apparatus market is so small, the manufacturers of major components like chassis reportedly would sell them to the more profitable commercial sector for the production of over-the-road trucks,” the group testified, adding that these types of supply-chain shortages extended into 2022.

After that, however, other issues kept prices and wait times high, the group said. Those include increased demand for new vehicles from fire departments that had received COVID-relief money from the federal government, Environmental Protection Agency mandates and workforce changes.

The fire chiefs’ association urged the Trump administration and Congress to help fix the problem by working with manufacturers “to prioritize the delivery of semiconductors, chassis, engines and other fire apparatus components.”

Other fire industry leaders have pointed to another possible contributor to the issue — a rapid consolidation of fire vehicle manufacturers.

In May, the International Association of Fire Fighters, a union representing over 350,000 firefighters and emergency medical workers in North America, and the nonpartisan, nonprofit, anti-monopoly American Economic Liberties Project group wrote to U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission leaders, urging them to “investigate and take action against consolidation in fire and emergency vehicle manufacturers.”

According to the letter, three companies — REV Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer — dominate two-thirds of the fire apparatus manufacturing industry.

“The consolidation trend has stifled competition, leading to two core problems … skyrocketing prices … and brutal backlogs,” the groups told the federal agencies. “These problems have reduced the readiness of fire departments to respond to emergencies, with dire consequences for public safety.”

Local fire chiefs have noticed the consolidation of the fire vehicle manufacturing industry.

“There’s not a lot of people in the business,” Hebert said. “They’ve all kind of merged.”

Leek described it as “massive consolidation.”

“There are only a couple large players, and there used to be dozens and dozens of fire apparatus manufacturers,” he said.

The top three manufacturers own the companies making most of the fire vehicles for Clark County fire departments. Pierce, which makes engines for Camas-Washougal, Fire District 6 and Clark-Cowlitz fire departments, is a subsidiary of Oshkosh, and KME, which produces apparatus for the Vancouver Fire Department, is a subsidiary of REV Group.

Perez amendment

Fire chiefs in Southwest Washington have brought the issue to the attention of U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, and urged her to take action.

In mid-September, Perez announced that her amendment to address corporate consolidation in the fire truck and emergency vehicle industry had unanimously passed the House Appropriations committee with bipartisan support.

The amendment urges the FTC to report to Congress on how such consolidation has impacted prices and wait times.

“One thing I’ve heard over and over from first responders across Southwest Washington is how much the cost of emergency vehicles has increased,” Perez said in a Sept. 15 news release. “I don’t think corporations are just run by greedy suits, but it’s important that we understand the federal government’s role in this, because candidly most of the funding for these emergency apparatuses come from our tax dollars.”

In a House Appropriations committee meeting held last month, Perez said the consolidation that has happened in the fire apparatus manufacturing industry is profound.

“It’s estimated that 65 to 75 percent of the emergency vehicle industry has been consolidated by just three companies,” Perez said. “And that means that our taxpayers, our emergency responders, are left footing the bill on this.”

That’s a message many fire officials in Southwest Washington would like local taxpayers to understand.

“Oftentimes, the public looks at the need for more tax revenues to maintain these essential services, and they don’t understand that these are costs we can’t control,” Free said. “They think it’s mismanagement or runaway labor costs. … I think it’s important for them to understand these cost escalations.”

Leek, Vancouver’s interim fire chief, agreed.

“It’s hard for people to understand how (this) affects them directly,” he said. “But we end up having to make a choice — either we reduce service or we increase taxes.”