Quote:Ive been reading with great interest regarding the Richmond situation. Oh sure, the TQC sounds good on paper, the purse holders love the idea, combine two trucks into one, therefore we can save money. Well the dimes that you are saving is now turning into dollars youre spending just to keep these rigs on the road. They have to understand that there is alot of weight on that chassis and if your roads are not in the best of shape these rigs are going to get abuse. Add the thousands of runs per year that they handle, and sure they are going to break down faster and be out of service for longer periods of time. St. Louis who pioneered the idea of the TQC is going back to the traditional engine/truck concept. Quints do have their place in the fire service, but not as an option to phase out engine companies. Best of luck to the RFD in the return to traditional apparatus, I can only hope that this was a lesson learned......From a managment perspective, the apparatus costs in moving to a TQC deployment are not really the primary concern in regards to "cost savings". The primary concern is the savings in labor costs. Typically, the move to TQC is accompanied with a reduction in overall staffing in the department and the labor cost savings that accompany the reduction in overall staffing are sufficient to offset any increased vehicle related costs.
As for St. Louis, they didn't actually return to the "traditional engine/truck concept". They only switched some of their companies from Quint apparatus to Engine apparatus. I'd estimate that less than half of their companies made that switch. As I understand their deployment plan now, units still assume operational roles based on order of arrival, but with some modifications. Companies with engine apparatus assume the appropriate engine role - 1st arriving engine, 2nd arriving engine, etc. Quint companies (the 75' ones titled "Truck") still assume the appropriate engine or truck role as before. If a company assigned one of the new engines is using a reserve unit (a 75' quint - no engines in the reserve pool) their unit ID changes from "Engine #" to "Truck #" and they function the same as before while in that reserve unit.
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