Back in 1971 my dept ordered a new Ford L900 chasis and spec. it chrome yellow when the craz was on, since then everything we ordered has been red, the yellow truck stood out like a swore thumb, so back about 6yrs. ago I asked the membership if we could have it painted red, the answer was yes so I went to work did alot of replace and repair on the body and in 3 months we had another red fire truck, now they are all the same color...RED
When I first joined the service I was at fire school and talking to FF from other departments. We were talking colors and this one young man stated that thier trucks were the same color as the town..White.
People think we have black over red because we'e predomintely black. But the real answer is an old cheif wrecked our new caravan and the replacment was black over red. We all liked it and ordered our 82 Seagrave that color combo.
We worked well with a nieghboring company and talked about merging. The only issue is truck color. We'e black over red and thier Green. Having red, black and green engines might seem a little militant for some people ;o)