Ferrara Fire Apparatus

[mikek821]

Our county is it's infinent wisdom has decided to go LOW bid on our new equiptment
Can anyone tell me any information posistive or negative about Ferrara Fire Equiptment..
Please email me your responceses as well as posting them ....Thanks
Mikek821@aol.com

[Stephen Coleman]

We just accepted and have in production a new 1700 gal tanker from Ferrara. One of the neighboring departments in our county also just took delivery of a new custom pumper on a Spartan chassis from Ferrara.

As with any vendor, you must ride roughshod over them, but our experiences with Ferrara have been great. Delivery of the completed pumper was 60 days after receipt of the PO, and the truck was complete.

We are expecting our truck to be delivered within 60 days also, and our visit to the plant was a great learning experience.
If you had questions, all you had to do was stop and talk to any employee. They would give you any info and show you anything you wanted to know.

We shopped the biggies, E-One, ALF, KME, etc.
and E-one and Ferrara were the only ones who wanted to bid. But e-one would not customize anything at all. Their stock reponse was "that can not be added to this program truck"
Ferrara said, "what do you want?"

Take a visit to their factory, and you will be satisfied.

Chief Steve Coleman
Nesbit VFD

[MetalMedic]

Ferrara Fire Apparatus... well... hmmm... I guess I'll keep my mouth shut since I am not in the loop on the one we have. I do know there were some "issues" with our new one. Send an e-mail to my Assistant Chief at bishop602@aol.com and ask him for his input. I am sure he would be happy to help you out.

Isn't it good to know that the builders of our nuclear missle control systems went to the low bidders????

------------------
Richard Nester
Orrville (OH) Fire Dept.


[This message has been edited by MetalMedic (edited 11-15-2000).]

[resqb]

I don't have info on the newer Ferrara Inferno's. But we have three of the "low-bid" engines they build. The ones advertised in the trade mags at $140,000 for a class A pumper. They have all had their share of problems. One sounds like a can of washers when it's idling. They stop really well since they all have Telma retarders, but when you're supposed to shut it off in wet conditions they just don't want to stop. One rig had a crack in body framework. They are also geared to 76 mph, which means no low end power, which you need on our hills.
I'll admit some of the problems are from specs, but in my opinion these econo-rigs just aren't made to be run hard.