Clinton fire truck to be sold

By Randy Bell

A closer look at the 1955 fire truck shows the markings barely visible on the rusty door.

Clinton is saying farewell to its first fire truck. The 1955 Chevrolet 5400 is going to public auction after the Board of Aldermen approved Chief Levius Buckley’s request February 3.

The chief says he’s not sure how long the truck was actually used to fight fires in Clinton.

“When I got hired, it was at the old training center, and it had been outside for fifteen-plus years. It probably had been out of service since the mid-1990s.”

The truck is now parked outside Station 2.

The fire department will use the same online marketplace to try to sell this truck as it did for its old Engine 3 last year. GovDeals serves as a go-between to help government agencies dispose of surplus property. An Alabama company bought the old engine for $91,000 and resold it to a buyer in Missouri.

Buckley doesn’t expect to get much for the 1955 truck.

“Some people collect them. You could rebuild the pump, [but] it wouldn’t do anything fire service-wise anymore. It’s too small.”

He says the rusty old truck probably hasn’t been cranked in years.

“It needed a transmission, a couple of other things, a clutch and all that stuff that we really didn’t delve into” said Buckley. “It would be okay to keep, but it’s a bit of a money pit.”

Clinton’s 1955 fire truck is shown parked outside Station 2.

The chief says they’ll take some photos of the truck and upload them to the GovDeals website to see if anyone shows interest.

“We can bid it for a week, two weeks, thirty days,” he says.

A buyer, if there is one, will have to come to Clinton to pick up the truck.

This isn’t the City’s only antique fire truck. There’s a 1964 Mack which people may remember from local parades. Now at Station 1, that truck will be headed back to Station 4, where it was housed before it was moved to make room for old Engine 3 while it was waiting to be picked up by its new owner.

The chief says the money earned from the sale of old Engine 3 and the 1955 truck will be only a drop in the bucket in terms of what Clinton needs for its next fire truck purchase – a new ladder truck.

“That’s probably close to $2.1 to $2.2 million. I guess [the $91,000] is an okay downpayment, maybe.”