Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company’s oldest engine, the 1989 FMC engine, has been in operation for longer than many of the company’s members have been alive.

These days, the engine typically is used for training in the Cranberry area, and is a reserve vehicle if other vehicles are not available.

But when it comes to replacing the 1989 engine, division chief Mike Hanks said he "wasn't prepared" to hear how long it would take to get a new fire truck. The final numbers were a shock — 28 months and a $751,000 price tag.

“It was kind of a shock to all of us,” Hanks said. “It is completely abnormal. It’s like that across the board; it’s not just one vendor. Pretty much everybody that is doing fire trucks right now is doing so on a very extended timeline.”

Cranberry’s projected wait until 2024 is not unusual across first responders and departments in Butler County and beyond. Shortages of parts, inflation and residual COVID-19 supply chain issues have added up to increased wait times for new trucks, police cars and engines.

“The cost is up substantially on these, (as are) the lead times on them to get them,” Hanks said. “With material shortages and everything else, you’re kind of at the mercy of that.”

The Mars Borough Police Department recently ordered a white Ford Explorer police cruiser for $43,843. The borough doesn’t expect to see the new vehicle anytime this year, officer-in-charge Mark Lint said.

“Trying to get the right color and the right vehicle can sometimes be difficult,” he said. “We just ordered it, so we will have to pay it when it comes in. I don’t think it’s going to be this year.”

The borough specifically wanted a white police vehicle so that it could be distinguished from Adams Township’s police vehicles, which are black. But when Lint checked in with dealer Tri Star Motors in Somerset, Pa., where the borough ordered its last police vehicle, he got the bad news: the Ford manufacturers were around 7,000 vehicles behind in ordering.

“I think that with issues with the pandemic and post-pandemic, and the availability of chips for vehicles, it’s created a bit of a hold,” Lint said. “I believe most of the manufacturers are probably trying to catch up due to those issues.”

Timothy Aldom, commercial account manager at Tri Star Motors, said there is a “backlog of everything” at the moment. He blames the disruption on the shortage of computer chips.

“There’s just such a backlog because of the chip problem, and that’s just business as usual here for the past couple of years, until everything gets caught back up,” he said. “There is such a backlog of sold units that they’re just taking forever. Other than that, who knows how long this will continue.”

Cars don’t take as long as fire trucks to order, but there is still a lag.

“Normally, it was six to eight weeks for an order, and now it can be up to six months,” he said. “The fortunate thing with the Mars Borough is we have some inbound, so they should get theirs a lot quicker than most.”

There are delays across brand lines, Aldom added, and prices have continued to climb.

“The pricing has gone up. From what I see, it’s gone up across the board for everybody,” he said. “I don’t see anybody that’s kept pricing the same. (Prices have) all jumped up within the last two years.”

Aldom said it was an issue of supply and demand.

“There is just not enough supply out there,” he added. “I’ve had vehicles on order and taken up to a year before I’d see them.”

Connoquenessing Volunteer Fire Company has had a vehicle “specced out” for a while, meaning the plans for the specifics of the vehicle are ready. The company doesn’t plan to order it anytime soon, though.

“We need to build our new fire station first, is what we have been focused on,” said Chief Lou Zimmerman Jr. “The station we have, every time I buy an engine, I have to customize it to fit it into the station we have because it’s so small, and that adds thousands of dollars onto the price tag.”

Fire trucks are customizable, and departments typically plan out down to the minute detail what type of truck they want and what works for their community, he said.

“When you spec a truck, you pretty much spec it out where you want everything — where you want the ladders, where you want the hoses, what size pump and engine you want,” Zimmerman said. “There are different models of fire engines, too — there’s different brands, and when you are trying to configure all that and (different sizes of) compartments to put your tools in, it is quite a process. It’s not something quick that you can sit down one night and nail it out. It takes some time to sit down with the designers and knock out some designs.”

Certain types of fire trucks are better suited to specific regions. Some work better in urban areas than rural, and vice versa. All of that factors in to customization, he said.

“One of the biggest things I can think of is if you’re in a city with a hydranted area, you don’t need such a big water tank, and that gives you a lot more room for compartments,” Zimmerman said. “Where we are at, we are about 25 to 27% hydranted, and so, we need the bigger water tank on there, which cuts down on compartment size. We have to bring more water with us because the hydrants aren't as readily available.”

Zimmerman doesn’t expect to order the planned truck for another few years, at least until early 2024, when the fire station building project is scheduled to be finished.

“The truck that we specced out, it will not fit in our current station, so it has to come after the new station,” he said. “It's kind of a few-fold situation here. We needed to upgrade our engine, and we absolutely need a new station.”

Cranberry Township tends to take a long time determining the specs for new vehicles, Hanks said. He described the process as akin to buying a custom home.

“We spend about a year to spec out one of our trucks, and it is something we spend a lot of time on,” he said. “We want it to be exactly what we want — what suits our needs for our township.”

The contract to spell out all of the specifications for the most recent new vehicle is about 150 pages in detail, Hanks added.

“The last thing that (I) or the leadership of the fire company wants is to buy a truck we didn’t need, or that didn’t spec out to suit our needs,” he said.

The $751,000 price for the truck Cranberry ordered does not include the costs to equip the vehicle with hoses and tools, Hanks said. It’s still a significant jump in price from previous years.

“That’s definitely up from pre-COVID (pricing), just with the increase,” he said. “The biggest thing is the increase in metal pricing. That is definitely abnormal pre-COVID.”

At the moment, having to wait 28 months for the new truck isn’t too big of a hit to Cranberry Township VFC’s functionality. The 1989 vehicle is a reserve truck, and the township has 12 fire vehicles in total, ranging from the chief’s take-home vehicle to the largest tower fire truck.

Hanks is acutely aware that not all departments have that luxury, he emphasized.

“We’re very fortunate to have the fleet that we have, that it’s not a devastating loss to us or puts us out of service if one of our trucks was to go down,” he said. “When you have some of these smaller departments with only one or two fire trucks, that could take them out of service.”

The department also has a maintenance team through the Cranberry public works department that can assist with repairs to vehicles.

“If we have something go down, they jump on it immediately for us and they get it fixed,” Hanks said. “There are other departments that don’t have that. I tell everybody who lives in Cranberry how fortunate we are. It’s something we don’t take for granted — not a lot of places have that.”