As always, 1. leaving it up to the market and then 2. ignoring anti-trust enforcement. What a surprise. China's pace of QoL improvement will eat the US (and really, the West) alive.
By the way the owners of AIP also happen to mostly be suppliers of materials for building these vehicles. They have a double incentive to abuse their monopoly position.
Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
It says that cost for a regular fire truck has increased from 300-500k to 1mil from 2010 to 2025. Considering house and car prices have doubled, we can chalk most of that up to purely inflation. Seems like another case of forgetting that inflation has been sky-high due to botched COVID response and what would be a good story in previous decades just, isn't.
As a consumer (even a corporate or government consumer), you have to watch out for this in a capitalist system. My ex's family asked me to take my son to this specific water park this weekend. When I went to buy the tickets this morning, it was going to be $250 to go to the swimming pool! I live in Austin, TX and we have the coolest pool in the world and it's $5 ($8 or something like that if I take my son).
Businesses will try and trick people into thinking $250 is an acceptable price to charge to visit a swimming pool. They'll do the same shit with firetrucks if nobody is paying attention.
Excellent article, and great to see someone pointing this out. Prices will climb out of control if people are suckers and believe the lie of "you get what you pay for." It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Extended rant... my ex once wanted to pay $500 for a f*cking vacuum cleaner. People are stupid. Had we listened to Henry Ford they'd still be making some version of the Model T and you could buy a new car for $6,008.85 (inflation adjusted price of a Model T).
What's really wild is $2M is around the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile, Patriot missiles can cost almost double that. The Excalibur GPS guided round costs roughly as much as a nice Mercedes and during a conflict hundreds or thousands can be fired.
I came to this realization when learning about someone driving a car into a building to do damage and thinking "wow, that's an expensive round", then looking it up and realizing, it's not actually that expensive compared to how much military projectiles really do cost.
I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much, nor that military weapons aren't worth it. More that I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.
Is this really any different to pre-covid, I could negotiate $3k off a Toyota Sienna minivan and have my pick of color tomorrow and now there is a several month to a year waiting list and I have to pay $5k to 10k over MSRP and MSRP is up 20% since 2019?
These numbers for trucks paired with the 3+ year wait times are very real. It hits small communities the hard because they have a small tax base but still need a certain amount of trucks. You can only consolidate so much before you are to far to respond.
Another good point called out in the article are the floating costs. The manufactures do in fact increase the costs after the fact so not only do you need to order a truck years ahead of time with a budget you don’t have (borrow money) but then you have to cough up an indeterminate amount of money years later. A real sad time for first responders.
Fire and rescue appliances are a bit of a problematic thing to buy as they never go very far and are retired with low mileages.
In my Australian State, South Australia, this a huge contrast with police who buy new from the manufacturer, get a three or maybe five year service contract from the manufacturer and then sell them when the warranty expires and they've done around 100,000 km (60,000 miles). So no servicing worries and they get some tax benefits so it works for them.
Ambulances have less mileage and my guess is retire after 10 years. Ambulances are very standardised so can swap metro and country vehicles to get value from the asset. There was a "twin life" ambulance (http://www.old-ambulance.com/Twin-Life.htm) that had a long life rear bit on a light truck chassis so swap out the motor bit two or three times every 200,000kms, but these days vans are used. There was much sadness in the ambulance fleet buying community when Ford discontinued the F150 type chassis in Australia.
But your average (fire/rescue) appliance in the city or country has low mileage. In the city plenty of use but never have to drive far. In the country not much use but do drive further but end up the same a very old vehicle without much mileage on the clock. Trailers can be even older 50 or 60 years before retirement. Another issue with a fire appliance is they carry water which is heavy, three tonnes is a pretty common load. And have other readers have mentioned a monopoly on manufacture wouldn't help.
Type 5/6/7 engines (basically a pickup with a tank and a pump on the back) exist. I'm not a firefighter, but I infer from the fact that these standard firefighting vehicle types are used pretty much exclusively in wild land firefighting that they are not considered suitable for structural firefighting.
Some luxury wake board boats cost $500k. They might get used twice a month, destroy shore lines, pollute the environment and are designed strictly for leisure. They won’t save anyone, or eliminate an enemy.
Why don't towns buy the Chinese trucks? Why doesn't a new entrant start making cheaper firetrucks? I really don't know what a firetruck "should" cost but $2M seems reasonable to me for a specialized, low-volume, high-performance, American-built industrial vehicle.
My two cents of info as mildly informed. I am a volunteer ff/emt.
My department is very well funded compared to the rest of our county. Compared to cities, it is laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics, only EMTs (about 4).
An Engine not only has to run but has to pump. An engine may drive 3 miles but then run for 20 hours without moving but pumping water the entire time (using the transmission to do so). If the pump is not up to standards, FFs do not enter a building. No water, no entry. If the pump isn't compliant then it is not longer an "engine". Mileage is irrelevant. A low mileage engine (10k) might have a million other problems after 100k hours. Who fixes that in a volunteer department?
Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board. In the city the answer is always transport. If you have 1 ambulance and 6 hours round trip, you may stay on scene for a while to avoid a transport (assuming you don't risk the patient's life).
Most volunteer departments have 1-2 engines, and those are aging. If an engine goes out of service without a replacement, we stop responding.
This is not a city/rural problem. If you have ever taken a road trip, gone camping, visited relatives in "the country", then then you are relying on, and praying they have the equipment and staff to respond. Go outside the city for a rafting trip- swiftwater, rope rescue, EMS, traffic... all in the hands of volunteers with no resources.
Back to the article- we have one engine out of service. We can't buy 20x our tax revenue. Yes, everything has gone up in price. When EMS and Fire becomes unpurchaseable, there are (dire) consequences.
Government almost always seems to overpay for everything. It's a racket to benefit big finance.
The idea that everything is so complex that only a small number of suppliers are capable of building any machine is preposterous.
I bet you with a budget of $50 million, I could design and build a Firetruck from scratch as well as the entire production line and I could produce each subsequent truck for $200k max, made in America. I could probably have the whole thing almost fully automated with robots in 5 years with a bit of additional funding.
And I know nothing about mechanical or electrical engineering. I just know I could do it. I would find the right people. There doesn't need to be that many components to bloat up the cost/complexity to $2 million, that's ridiculous. I'm no Elon Musk. I just think many people with a little bit of brain could do it if given the opportunity.
The problem is lack of opportunity. I will not be given this opportunity because it works against established financial interests. The economy is a zero-sum game, that's a fact. Everybody knows this because nobody would even give me the opportunity to prove it even though $50 million would be chump change for big finance.
Why would anyone fund a venture which involves work and risk, when they can already extract the same nominal profits without any additional risk or work? Nobody is thinking about 'real value'; everyone is chasing nominal gains in a race to the bottom; whipping up the entire economy into a giant souffle full of air.
Caring about nominal gains is like caring only about volume and ignoring the weight... If the economy was a cooking competition, everyone would end up baking souffle, chocolate mousse and meringue. Nobody would be baking pound cake.
42 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 47.9 ms ] thread> Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.
As usual, things are the way they are because of unchecked capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.
Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
Businesses will try and trick people into thinking $250 is an acceptable price to charge to visit a swimming pool. They'll do the same shit with firetrucks if nobody is paying attention.
Excellent article, and great to see someone pointing this out. Prices will climb out of control if people are suckers and believe the lie of "you get what you pay for." It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Extended rant... my ex once wanted to pay $500 for a f*cking vacuum cleaner. People are stupid. Had we listened to Henry Ford they'd still be making some version of the Model T and you could buy a new car for $6,008.85 (inflation adjusted price of a Model T).
I came to this realization when learning about someone driving a car into a building to do damage and thinking "wow, that's an expensive round", then looking it up and realizing, it's not actually that expensive compared to how much military projectiles really do cost.
I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much, nor that military weapons aren't worth it. More that I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.
Another good point called out in the article are the floating costs. The manufactures do in fact increase the costs after the fact so not only do you need to order a truck years ahead of time with a budget you don’t have (borrow money) but then you have to cough up an indeterminate amount of money years later. A real sad time for first responders.
In my Australian State, South Australia, this a huge contrast with police who buy new from the manufacturer, get a three or maybe five year service contract from the manufacturer and then sell them when the warranty expires and they've done around 100,000 km (60,000 miles). So no servicing worries and they get some tax benefits so it works for them.
Ambulances have less mileage and my guess is retire after 10 years. Ambulances are very standardised so can swap metro and country vehicles to get value from the asset. There was a "twin life" ambulance (http://www.old-ambulance.com/Twin-Life.htm) that had a long life rear bit on a light truck chassis so swap out the motor bit two or three times every 200,000kms, but these days vans are used. There was much sadness in the ambulance fleet buying community when Ford discontinued the F150 type chassis in Australia.
But your average (fire/rescue) appliance in the city or country has low mileage. In the city plenty of use but never have to drive far. In the country not much use but do drive further but end up the same a very old vehicle without much mileage on the clock. Trailers can be even older 50 or 60 years before retirement. Another issue with a fire appliance is they carry water which is heavy, three tonnes is a pretty common load. And have other readers have mentioned a monopoly on manufacture wouldn't help.
Somebody will go buy a standard commercial truck with a flat bed and put a pump and hose on the back of it.
My department is very well funded compared to the rest of our county. Compared to cities, it is laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics, only EMTs (about 4).
An Engine not only has to run but has to pump. An engine may drive 3 miles but then run for 20 hours without moving but pumping water the entire time (using the transmission to do so). If the pump is not up to standards, FFs do not enter a building. No water, no entry. If the pump isn't compliant then it is not longer an "engine". Mileage is irrelevant. A low mileage engine (10k) might have a million other problems after 100k hours. Who fixes that in a volunteer department?
Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board. In the city the answer is always transport. If you have 1 ambulance and 6 hours round trip, you may stay on scene for a while to avoid a transport (assuming you don't risk the patient's life).
Most volunteer departments have 1-2 engines, and those are aging. If an engine goes out of service without a replacement, we stop responding.
This is not a city/rural problem. If you have ever taken a road trip, gone camping, visited relatives in "the country", then then you are relying on, and praying they have the equipment and staff to respond. Go outside the city for a rafting trip- swiftwater, rope rescue, EMS, traffic... all in the hands of volunteers with no resources.
Back to the article- we have one engine out of service. We can't buy 20x our tax revenue. Yes, everything has gone up in price. When EMS and Fire becomes unpurchaseable, there are (dire) consequences.
The idea that everything is so complex that only a small number of suppliers are capable of building any machine is preposterous.
I bet you with a budget of $50 million, I could design and build a Firetruck from scratch as well as the entire production line and I could produce each subsequent truck for $200k max, made in America. I could probably have the whole thing almost fully automated with robots in 5 years with a bit of additional funding.
And I know nothing about mechanical or electrical engineering. I just know I could do it. I would find the right people. There doesn't need to be that many components to bloat up the cost/complexity to $2 million, that's ridiculous. I'm no Elon Musk. I just think many people with a little bit of brain could do it if given the opportunity.
The problem is lack of opportunity. I will not be given this opportunity because it works against established financial interests. The economy is a zero-sum game, that's a fact. Everybody knows this because nobody would even give me the opportunity to prove it even though $50 million would be chump change for big finance.
Why would anyone fund a venture which involves work and risk, when they can already extract the same nominal profits without any additional risk or work? Nobody is thinking about 'real value'; everyone is chasing nominal gains in a race to the bottom; whipping up the entire economy into a giant souffle full of air.
Caring about nominal gains is like caring only about volume and ignoring the weight... If the economy was a cooking competition, everyone would end up baking souffle, chocolate mousse and meringue. Nobody would be baking pound cake.