Prior to the consolidation of Kinzer Fire Company and Gordonville Fire Company to Pequea Valley Fire Department (PVFD), Gordonville Fire Company established a committee to replace Engine 43-1 (now Engine 403), which is a 1998 E One Cyclone. This unit call sign is an Engine; however, it meets the standards to dual function as an Engine and a Tanker. After months of research and planning, in December of 2021 Gordonville Fire Company ordered a Seagrave Marauder with an expected delivery date of late 2023. Fast forward to Fall of 2023 after industry wide supply chain issues, production timelines and costs became more defined. Now, as Pequea Valley Fire Department, a new delivery date of 2024 with an increased cost exceeding $100,000 was presented to the Department from Seagrave Manufacturing. A production extension and a cost increase were presented to many other departments across Lancaster and York Counties with pending orders as well. This information required the new PVFD Board of Directors and Fire Officers to take a hard look at the needs of the department.

In our initial letter to the community explaining the concept of PVFD it stated “As we interact with you and many people who travel through our area, we recognize that things are changing at a fast pace. The needs of our community and how we respond to them have been one of these changes and we find ourselves needing to be more proactive in how we move forward with providing emergency services. Price increases, the decrease in the number of volunteers and current events are just a few of the reasons that working together would benefit everyone we serve. As we join together as PVFD, we will be able to collaborate better within Fire and EMS incidents, have more opportunities to train together, and we will have better purchasing power as we make the necessary purchases for multiple stations. Our desire is to have what we need in order to tend to most emergencies without wasting money on duplicate purchases of apparatus that a neighboring company may already have and not promoting the construction of multi-million-dollar buildings that are all within a few miles from each other. Depending on what type of fire apparatus, it could cost over one million dollars and a new ambulance could cost over four hundred thousand”. With this in mind, understanding the needs of apparatus within our own department, along with what resources are locally available with neighboring departments are of high priority.

This information forced the Board of Directors and Fire Officers to do an assessment on apparatus needs. The obvious conversation to be had was whether there is a need for two units in the department to have a “Tanker” function capacity with Tanker 405 at our Kinzer station (2018 Pierce Enforcer), and a new Seagrave Marauder serving as Engine 403 at our Gordonville station. Initially the decision was leaning more towards the way of canceling the order for the Seagrave for the Gordonville station until we can have a proper apparatus assessment completed on the needs of two tankers. As conversations continued there was an extensive review to the operation capacity of the newly designed Seagrave Marauder and the current Pierce Enforcer tanker at our Kinzer station. It was determined from an operational standpoint the newly designed Seagrave Pumper-Tanker would better serve our community than the current Pierce Enforcer for the years to come. We also agreed that at a minimum one tanker would be needed and further research would need to be done to determine the need for a second tanker. With this in mind, the Board of Directors proposed to the membership of the Department to replace the 2018 Pierce Enforcer at the Kinzer station with the new Seagrave Marauder as “Tanker 405”, with the opportunity to capitalize on the higher resale value of the six-year-old Pierce Enforcer. In turn, the Department would hold on to the 1998 E One Cyclone at our Gordonville station to continue running as Engine 403. This decision will allow us to lock in the Seagrave Marauder as the primary Department tanker, serving as Tanker 405 for the expected 25+ years and allows us the time to assess the actual long-term need for Engine 403 (Engine/Tanker vs. Engine). Once that study is completed, the Department will look into options to replace the 1998 E One Cyclone. At the November 2023 meeting the membership voted to approve the Board of Directors’ proposal. With the approval to move forward the Board of Directors appointed Jonathan Fisher to handle the sale of the 2018 Pierce Enforcer. The unit has been listed for sale. Should anyone have questions regarding the sale of the unit or if any departments are interested in the unit, please reach out to Jonathan at jfisher@pvfd40.com