Legal action is needed to stop spiraling fire equipment costs

Greed may be good on Wall Street. When it comes to rural main streets, the greed of giant corporations is leaving communities struggling to provide essential firefighting and emergency services and contributing to rising property taxes.

For this reason, local communities should join a recently filed class action lawsuit against three fire truck manufacturers and the Fire Apparatus Manufacturer’s Association who stand accused of “unlawfully conspiring” to increase prices on firefighter and emergency response equipment.

The city of La Crosse filed the federal class action lawsuit against REV Group of Brookfield, Oshkosh Corporation and Rosenbauer America, the American branch of an Austrian-based company that manufacturers in Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.

According to the complaint, these three companies together control between 70% and 80% of the multi-billiondollar fire truck market in the United States. The class action lawsuit contends that the manufacturers conspired to limit supply and drive up prices.

Soaring prices for firefighting and other emergency response equipment is nothing new for local government and fire commission members. Typically, local fire departments measure the useable life of equipment in decades of service. In the Medford Area Fire Department, for example, barring catastrophic failures, firefighting vehicles are routinely expected to serve for 30 years or more before being replaced. In other, more cash-strapped departments, the service life of vehicles is often pushed out farther.

In recent years there has been a shift, which began during the supply-chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, to departments needing to place orders for equipment months, if not years, in advance of when they will need them. Faced with aging equipment and ever-increasing manufacturer-driven compliance standards, municipalities and departments are left scrambling to secure their place in line. At the same time, ongoing industry consolidation has worked to eliminate any legitimate competition.

The Medford Area Fire Commission recently approved a budget calling for a substantial increase in the amount of money each municipality sets aside each year to purchase replacement trucks. Even with the increase in the amount being saved up, municipal leaders expect to have to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars more when it comes to buy the next piece of apparatus.

Thanks to the influx of cash with the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), the last big COVID-era aid bill, many municipalities used the windfall of federal funds to update emergency response equipment and operations. This made the dramatically higher costs at least more palatable for local governments, because the higher costs weren’t directly going on their local tax levies. It seems that the manufacturers didn’t get the memo that the freespending ARPA days are past. Instead, with a focus on greed rather than need, the industry has continued the rapid increase in prices, to the detriment of local residents and taxpayers creating a crisis not only in town halls, but around the country. The spiraling cost of firefighting equipment is unsustainable, placing local boards in the precarious position of balancing public safety with fiscal reality.

Local municipalities should join the class action lawsuit with La Crosse and present a unified front to pressure these giant companies to bring prices down to a realistic level.