First Of Two New Squad Trucks Arrive In Sedalia

On Monday night prior to a City Council meeting, Sedalia residents got a chance to view the Sedalia Fire Department's new squad truck, which arrived in Sedalia July 8 and will be in service in a couple of weeks.

The truck was ordered months ago, and Fire Chief Matt Irwin seemed very pleased to take possession of it and is eager to get it into service.

“It is a beautiful truck. It is a functionally sound truck that will serve the citizens of Sedalia very well. It's a 2023 Ford F-550 built by Feld Manufacturing out of Carroll, Iowa,” Irwin said, adding that Feld has a service center in Oak Grove.

“After seven months of waiting for it, I'm very happy that it's here,” Chief Irwin commented.

The truck's cabin and chassis are standard for the F-550, but custom-built beyond that.

“We have drawers and slide-out trays that we can put equipment on, and slide it out. It's easier for firefighters to get equipment off those trays, with less reaching and bending. It also has a compressor system on it to refill our SCVA bottles. That system allows us to be able to fill our air bottles while we're on scene, versus having to pack them all on a truck and take them back to the station, fill them, then come back to the fire scene. This allows us to do that on scene, while we're there,” Irwin said, adding that will save about 45 minutes round trip.

“This will allow us to fill them as we're using them on scene, so it will greatly make us more effective and be able to put our trucks back in service, so when we leave that fire scene, all of our bottles are full, so we don't have to go back to the station to top off bottles so we can go from one call to the next,” he told KSIS.

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“Its primary responsibility is going to be responding to medical calls to take wear & tear off our big engines and put it on this smaller chassis and frame,” Chief Irwin noted.

The squad truck is one of two that have been ordered at a cost of $204,000. It will be another 120 days before the second one is delivered.

“Then those two trucks will take all the medical calls on both sides of the City,” Irwin said, which he estimated to be about 70 percent of all calls received by the SFD. “They will get used a lot. You will see them out and about.”