For Michael Carroll, the economics of buying a new firetruck are getting tougher and tougher all the time.
Carroll's got 31 years under his belt at the Stoughton Fire Department. He's been chief of the South Shore department, overseeing a staff of 70, since 2021.
He spends a lot of time thinking about firetrucks.
The price is one thing: It's exploded over the last few years.
Fire engines that used to cost $500,000 now cost $1 million. A ladder truck that went for $1 million can now cost the local taxpayers $2 million or more, one expert told The Republican of Springfield.
"I guess, the overall biggest problem I have is I'm allowed, once a year, to ask for a piece of apparatus that fits the town's needs," Carroll said earlier this week.
"I have a one-shot deal at town meeting to ask for this — and the town — this is what really bothers me: One is the safety of the men and women (at the department). But two is the townspeople," he continued. "They approve it, which I feel like is great. Like they're so supportive and they're like 'Yes, $2.4 million for a ladder truck? OK, Chief, if you feel like you guys need it.' I'm like 'Yes, we do.'"
Then there's the wait. It's getting longer and longer.
Because even if he gets that coveted approval, the wait for a new truck that used to take a year can now take as much as three or four years.
And that means older trucks stay on the road longer. And that means he has to scrounge for the spare parts to keep them running. He half-jokingly recalls needing a replacement screw for one truck and being told it would take a week for the part to arrive.
None of those options are good. They put his firefighters at risk. They put the townspeople he's sworn to protect at risk.
"What that does is, you know, we're trying to extend the life of apparatus that should have either been retired or put into reserve," he said.
He's had to call in surrounding communities to help him in a pinch. And that means their trucks are away from their hometowns in case of an emergency.
"Our ladder (truck) was involved in a motor vehicle accident. Someone cut it off. And then that was out for a number of months. So I had to borrow a spare ladder from Foxborough," he said.
"I've spent over $500,000 in the past, well, I guess, year and a half, just to keep these trucks ready and available because they're getting old," he said. "They're worn and torn. And where, typically, I would have a new piece in place and not (put) that wear and tear on old apparatus. I've borrowed trucks from Hyannis and Braintree and Brockton."
Fire truck manufacturers — there are only a handful of them — have argued that they're still recovering from pandemic-era supply chain issues.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and some of her colleagues on Capitol Hill see something far more nefarious at work.
Namely, a near-monopoly, fired by industry consolidation and the influence of private equity firms, that's caused prices to skyrocket, factories to shutter and delivery backlogs to grow.
The Cambridge lawmaker, joined by U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and U.S. Reps. Becca Balint, D-Vt., and Ben Cline, R-Va., filed a bipartisan resolution calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, arguing that changes in the industry are squeezing the taxpayers and putting public safety at risk.
"When giant corporations and Wall Street investors buy up all the fire truck manufacturers, it's a threat to public safety," Warren said in a statement.
"There's a growing, bipartisan consensus that Congress must stop a handful of corporations from dominating fire truck manufacturing and making it harder and tremendously more expensive to get fire trucks," she continued.
The issue got a full airing on Capitol Hill during a Senate hearing last fall, where lawmakers grilled industry leaders on their business practices.
"In 2008, a private equity entity bought up a fire truck manufacturer," U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who chaired the hearing of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census, said at the time.
"Over the next decade, (it) rolled up six or seven more fire truck brands in what today is known as the REV Group. As a result, some 70% to 80% of the market is controlled by three or four companies," Hawley said, according to The Republican.
The resolution that Warren and her colleagues filed last week would task the FTC with investigating several matters and then report back to Congress within a year on its findings.
The extent of anticompetitive practices and violations of antitrust law in the fire truck manufacturing industry. That also takes in price fixing, price gouging, serial acquisitions and monopolization;
The financial and other harms of the industry's anticompetitive practices — along with its impact on firefighters and fire departments and state and local governments.
Recommendations for legislative remedies or other solutions.
"Anticompetitive practices are strong-arming our cities, wasting taxpayer dollars, and leaving firefighters without life-saving equipment," Banks said in the lawmakers' joint statement.
Cline offered a similar sentiment, calling the resolution "an important first step to restore competition, strengthen domestic manufacturing and ensure taxpayers and local fire departments receive fair value."
"Too often, growing delivery backlogs in the fire truck manufacturing industry are leaving fire departments across the ... nation without the necessary equipment first responders need to do their jobs safely and effectively," Cline said.
Back in Stoughton, Carroll said he's looking for a solution that's fair to the local taxpayers and ensures that he can keep his firetrucks on the road and his firefighters and community safe.
"I can't imagine that the military, if they lose a jet, they have to wait four or five years to get a new jet," he said. " ... The firefighters need the truck. They need the equipment."
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