Downingtown is auctioning off a yellow fire engine from 1998, with 28,558 miles on it and Engine 45 painted on the side, writes Zoe Greenberg for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Bids have already exceeded $11,000, with the auction ending on Sept. 26. The sale proceeds go to the borough.
According to Jack Law, the chief of the Downingtown Fire Department, the borough replaces its engines every 20 years or so, and this one was overdue for an upgrade.
The department recently received two new Pierce engines, referred to as the twins. It took two and a half years for the engines, each costing $679,000, to arrive due to the high demand for firefighting vehicles.
Today, those same two engines would cost about $1.2 million each and have a three- to four-year delivery time, explained Law. That makes the yellow Spartan/RD Murray Pumper, with a 700-gallon tank, a bit of a steal. The starting bid was set at $5,000.
The engine is yellow because Downingtown’s Alert Fire Co. started painting its engines that color in the 1960s, most likely to increase visibility for the public.
Read more about the yellow fire engine auction ending in a few days in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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