BREA : City Sells Its Vintage Fire Trucks--for $1

The small city of West Terre Haute, Ind., needed a fire truck.

The city of Brea had one that had been in service for 28 years and was being pushed into retirement.

A deal was struck. In a recent ceremony, officials of the West Terre Haute Volunteer Fire Department took possession of the 1961 Crown fire truck--for $1.

As he accepted the truck at a Brea City Council meeting Oct. 17, West Terre Haute Fire Chief Steve Leisure said that when Brea “called to ask if we would be interested in the truck, I thought it was a joke. Brea’s offer is just so generous.”

Brea Fire Chief Jerry McDowell said that Brea no longer needs the Crown, bought for $64,000 new, because it has a new $260,000 pumper truck.

McDowell said that the Crown should prove to be a sturdy truck for West Terre Haute, as it survived the rugged mountain roads and brush fires of Southern California for nearly three decades.

Brea also plans to “sell” another of its ‘60s-era Crown fire trucks, McDowell said. This one, a 1966 model, will go to Brea’s sister city, Lagos de Moreno, Mexico, in about a month, he said. Lagos de Moreno will also pay $1.

The idea to offer the fire truck to West Terre Haute came from Brea Councilman Ron Isles, who grew up near that community.

Isles said that West Terre Haute, a coal mining city of a few thousand people situated just west of Terre Haute, has been economically depressed for decades. Isles said that the city is too poor even to repair its streets and curbs, much less provide expensive firefighting equipment. The annual budget for its fire department is $30,000.

“It’s like Appalachia, almost,” Isles said.

When the Brea City Council several weeks ago was discussing what to do with the 1961 Crown, Isles said, he suggested that the city give it to West Terre Haute. The council agreed to charge a token $1 for the transaction for record-keeping purposes.

Leisure and another West Terre Haute fire official flew out to Southern California to take possession of the shiny red truck. It was loaded aboard a freight truck last week to be hauled back east at West Terre Haute’s expense.

And there, McDowell predicts, it should have a long life. “To stand a lot of those brush fires, they have to be good trucks,” McDowell said.

After it donates the truck to Lagos de Moreno, the Brea Fire Department fleet will have four engine trucks, including another Crown that is rarely used.

Crown trucks, once a staple of Southern California firefighting forces, were built in Los Angeles by a now-defunct manufacturer, McDowell said.