We Can’t Even Get The Basics Right: Fire Departments Facing Five-Year Long Wait For New Trucks

This is one of those local stories that doesn’t get a ton of traction in the national headlines, but highlights quite possibly one of the most alarming trends in modern America: the failure to get the basics right.

And by basics, in this case, I mean the ability for a town or city to put out fires.

Fire departments around the Denver, Colorado, metro area have been struggling to afford new fire engines, which have ballooned in costs over the years, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic/economic catastrophe of 2020 and Wall Street’s private equity companies. They also have to navigate absurd wait times for trucks to be manufactured and outfitted — wait times that can last as long as five years. So, for smaller fire departments without a ton of financial resources and manpower, this puts them in a perilous situation. (RELATED: Crucial Backbone Of America Slowly Crumbling Under The Weight Of Wall Street)

What if there’s a massive wildfire, commonplace in a state like Colorado, and the local fire department doesn’t have all the necessary trucks and engines to combat the blaze because they either couldn’t afford the equipment, or the equipment is languishing in factory mode? It’s a daunting proposition, but a real one that some departments face in 2026.

A firefighter from Colorado cleans his truck before heading back to the fire line at the first responders base camp set up at Zuma Beach, on January 13, 2025, in Malibu, California. A huge village has sprung up on the golden sands of a Malibu beach, temporary home to thousands of firefighters from all over North America, where the brave men and women battling Los Angeles’ fires eat, sleep and recuperate. Around 5,000 first responders mingle among trailers and tents, served calorie-laden breakfasts by inmates drafted in to help in the enormous effort. (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)

The Arvada Fire Protection District had to buy a demonstration truck model second-hand from a trade show because they couldn’t wait any longer for the real replacement.

Kirk Lock, the Arvada fire chief, told a local Colorado outlet, “If I order a fire truck today, you’re talking about on the short side, a two-year wait. On the long side, a five-year wait.” But it’s not only the wait times; the costs are staggering, and what would have cost $400,000 in 2011 is now almost $1.5 million.

Lock went on: “The cost of the fire trucks is rapidly outpacing our revenues. We have to make cuts in other areas to try to purchase our fire trucks.”

“Us, being just a two-station department, can be impacted very quickly with a loss of a single apparatus,” Golden Fire Department battalion chief Marc Staley said. “If we were to have a catastrophic accident that we lost one of our major apparatus, then we’d be working with some of our partners … to find an apparatus to fill in the short term.”

LOUISVILLE, CO – JANUARY 02: An American flag sits on a burned truck in a neighborhood decimated by the Marshall Fire on January 2, 2022 in Louisville, Colorado. Officials reported that 991 homes were destroyed, making it the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

A big reason why this is happening is that the fire apparatus market has been consolidated to just a handful of big manufacturers, leading to supply bottlenecks and a nationwide shortage. Every fire department in the country is competing with the others to buy from the same companies, and so the manufacturers can simply jack up prices.