Funding for trucks

I work for a proggressive growing fire district in Northeastern Washington State. We are a fairly well funded district as far has taxes go. We operate on a good budget. One problem is though funding for large purchases such as apparatus. We have somethings in place to build up funds for replacing appar. I am just curious to what others have done to help fund these big purchases. What are the out of the box ideas that you have used. This is the best thing about this service, we are surrounded by men and women that see a problem and find a solution, even if it's a bit oughta the ordinary.
So let me know what ideas you have. Even if they wern't as succeful as you hoped, let me know them. In advance I want to say thanks to anyone that posts and helps in this endevour.
Captain Alex Arnold
South Pend Oreille Fire/Rescue

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Permalink Reply by Trainer on March 22, 2009 at 7:29am
We do it the American way…..borrow the money. There are several ways; our state has a revolving 0 interest loan program funded by return payments, lease purchase through your apparatus MFG or a standard bank loan. Lenders get incentives to loan money to tax based originations plus if you have CD’s in a certain bank they also give a lower interest rate. What it takes here is leaders with enough moxy to sign the papers.
Permalink Reply by Chad Furr on March 22, 2009 at 9:59am
GRANTS!!! GRANTS!!! GRANTS!!! Apply for all of you can. The free money is out there if you want to work for it.
Permalink Reply by FF Nick on March 22, 2009 at 11:46am
When we bought our custom back in 04 we did a 20k down payment and got our fire district to get a 10 year loan for the rest. Our loan payment comes out of our yearly contract money.
Permalink Reply by Mark Klaene on March 22, 2009 at 11:57am
lease purchase, state funded loans , and grants

Unfortunately AFG apparatus grants are hard to get unless you are in dire need with minimal funding. I got one for my secondary department so it is possible. Also got state forestry grant for brush truck. I use to do lease purchasing and had good results but recently had a bad experience so went to state loans
Permalink Reply by paul michael komandt on May 10, 2009 at 2:24pm
We run off a $110,000- $120,000 budget every year. This is funded 100% by taxes. We have never emptied our fire fund and let the fund build over the years and our township fiscal officer writes a check for the full build price at contract signing. On the last purchase we saved $16,000 on 6 months of build time interest. Years back we would have the fiscal officer transfer $20,000 into an apparatus fund at the end of the fiscal year, but good spending habits have put the transfers to the side.
Permalink Reply by PFC Harmon on May 10, 2009 at 2:40pm
Our budget is only around 25,000 but we got our new Class A pumper through the county they are doing a 8 year rotation were they buy a truck every year for one department. We was first since we had the oldest truck and in five years we will get another one. Our mini pumper we bought ourselves on a ten year loan and it will be paid off in 5 years. It is rough sometimes but our community supports us fully, if we get strapped for cash all we have to do is tell them and we have it.

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