New ambulances for CFD « chicagoareafire.com

New ambulances for CFD

This from Josh Boyajian:

A sneak peak at some new ambos. From what I’ve heard, they are for Ambulances 3, 22, 23, 45, 48, 50, and 60.

New ambulances for Chicago. Josh Boyajian photo

Tags: chevron striping on ambulance, Chicago Fire Department, Josh Boyajian, new ambulance for the Chicago FD, Type III ambulance

This entry was posted on May 19, 2014, 10:23 AM and is filed under Ambulance photos, Fire Department News, New Delivery. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

23 Comments

#1 by NJ on May 21, 2014 - 1:35 PM

Never mind good on my comp. they’re still there.
#2 by NJ on May 21, 2014 - 1:33 PM

Fire Services Inc has cropped their pics to edit out the CFD rigs. Interesting.
#3 by Dennis on May 21, 2014 - 9:25 AM

Don’t be surprised to see the conversion of ambulance’s from BLS to ALS happen sooner than later. The deadline will be Sept. 1, 2014 if the contract goes thru without delay but like I said don’t be surprised if something happens around June 1st.
#4 by David on May 21, 2014 - 2:06 AM

@hugo: A bit off topic, but I think an interesting question. CFD doesn’t run their own shops any more, so the whole fleet is now handled by the Dept. of Fleet Management. CFD used to have their own heavy duty wreckers back in the 90s and earlier (Autocar, IHC and Mack rigs).
#5 by Bill Post on May 21, 2014 - 1:47 AM

Fleet Guy you are probably correct about the relocation’s of Ambulances 86 and 93 when the become ALS and Engine 38’s station in my opinion should have had an ALS ambulance assigned there a long time ago as Ambulance 10 has been the number 1 ambulance in runs in Chicago for a quite a while now and at least the north half of Engine 38’s district is in Ambulance 10’s still district. Engine 38 (which is an ALS engine) also has been the busiest Engine company in most of the recent years and if not the busiest then they usually come in the top 2 or 3 in terms of runs.
An ambulance that wasn’t mentioned is Ambulance 94 who are located with Ambulance 58 and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were relocated to Engine 88 as they have plenty of room for them in Engine 88’s large station.
I also understand that the new contract supposedly established a committee that would look into the possibility of adding 5 additional ALS ambulances , which if done would increase the fleet to 80 ALS ambulances.
#6 by hugo on May 20, 2014 - 10:55 PM

How come cfd doesn’t run a heavy duty rotator for heavy rescue special ops?
#7 by NJ on May 20, 2014 - 9:23 PM

Bill, 82 and 89 already have new rigs – remounts of the Braun boxes on 2013 F-350’s. So does 10 and 30. I would presume they’re gonna keep their new rigs.

Wayne, yes the gas engines and lightweight chassis will likely be the problem.
#8 by Wayne on May 20, 2014 - 8:58 PM

Wheeled Coach makes a decent rig. We run a few of them in our busier towns, a couple of which are pretty ghetto. They get a work out and are typically among the favorite rigs we have at my company. The issue Chicago will have won’t be the Wheeled Coach parts, it’ll be the god awful gas engines and the e-van chasis.
#9 by Bill Post on May 20, 2014 - 8:24 PM

Assuming that the new CFD contract get’s ratified by Local 2’s membership, the 15 present BLS ambulances will be converted to ALS ambulances, It would be interesting to see if all 15 of them get new rigs when they go ALS or whether most of them still use the current models when they are converted.

As the BLS ambulances will become a thing of the past the current fleet would probably be renumbered starting from 61 through 75 as it really wouldn’t make much sense to have then retain their current numbers and not have them numbered consecutively. I would guess that probably the special events and reserve fleet would probably be renumbered so that the new ALS ambulances could be in the 60 and 70 series.
While this logically makes sense it hasn’t been confirmed so I wouldn’t go by it until it happens.
- #10 by Fleet guy on May 20, 2014 - 11:39 PM
  
  Also two Bill a few converted ALS ambos will be relocated. For instance Ambo 93 will be doubled up with Ambo 42. They will be move to Engine 4. Also Ambo 86 is still running a 15 year old McCoy/Miller do to the size of Engine 99’s house. That could be on the moved to E38.
#11 by NJ on May 20, 2014 - 7:38 PM

These are E450’s I believe.

Many of the houses can barely fit the current/old Type I F-350 Ford Brauns. Anything bigger is a non starter, never mind cost.

Yes, these are certainly better than the current fleet that is worn down beyond safe. However, the question is are we bring penny wise dollar dumb. I find it hard the believe the WC Type III’s will give the city even 5 years of reliable service, especially in the busier rigs. For example, 23 is the fourth busiest ambo IIRC, so it’s rig is gonna get beat on a lot. In the meantime these are much better and safer for everyone.
#12 by Drew G on May 20, 2014 - 6:49 PM

Simon, as previously discussed in many other posts about the new ambo’s, an F-650 or Terrastar would be way too expensive for a fleet the size of Chicago’s. It’s just unrealistic and probably not practical given size restrictions in many firehouses.
#13 by Robert on May 20, 2014 - 6:47 PM

Well they aren’t the best for the city streets.
#14 by simon on May 20, 2014 - 3:23 PM

a f 650 or a terrastar would prob work better than an e350 and look better as well
#15 by Matthew G on May 20, 2014 - 3:08 PM

Fire Service Inc. posted up on their Facebook page today the new Alsip Road Rescue ambulance and in the photos for the new rig you can see the new ambulances for Amb 33, 36 & 41 in the background, already lettered and striped.
#16 by JS on May 20, 2014 - 9:08 AM

I can see why Wheeled Coach got the bid…Rahm told all department heads to do whatever they had to do to cut costs in order to balance the overall budget. The Brauns are 7 and 8 years old, with A LOT of wear. Anyone that knows ambulances knows 5 years is generally about the max for front line service. And the graphics might be low rent, but when someone needs an ambulance – do they care about cosmetics?
#17 by Josh on May 20, 2014 - 8:16 AM

Robert, what do you mean by garage ambulances? Doesn’t make any sense. The city needs new ambos, so this is better than what they have so everyone stop complaining.
#18 by NJ on May 20, 2014 - 8:06 AM

Gas. Wheeled Coach.
#19 by Rich on May 20, 2014 - 6:01 AM

Are they gas or diesel. Who’s making them
#20 by Martin Nowak on May 19, 2014 - 11:31 PM

Those $1 graphics still suck. But I like the rear of the ambos. They did a nice job there.
#21 by NJ on May 19, 2014 - 10:02 PM

Be interesting to see how this rig holds up for 23’s 7,400 + runs a year.

Hopefully the inside is a lot better than 13’s rig.
#22 by Robert on May 19, 2014 - 4:38 PM

Garage ambulances. They’d serve the private ambulance companies a lot better
#23 by Chuck on May 19, 2014 - 1:07 PM

Those look even more throwaway than the vans of 1989. Thought they would have done better graphics than this.