Useful Life Expectancy of EMS Units

Is there any recommendations, standards or what ever (other than the manufacturer who is trying to sell you a new bus) on the age or mileage of front line EMS units.

If your state, county or whatever has a policy of when they will take a unit out of front line service, that would help also.

My CO. just cancelled a new vehicle order, saying that we would have to wait 6months before they would CONSIDER an order. Currently, every unit (8) is over 100,000 most 120-140,000.

Don't know of any standards but it seems all our rigs start to get frequent maintence around 65,000 miles.

We have two trucks, one is our primary and the second is for Neonatal x-ports and our back-up. The first is a 93 Road Rescue on a 98 Ford chasis. The box has about 180,000 miles on it while the chasis has about 75,000. This truck is scheduled to be replaced entirly in early August, the maintance cost have gone up in about the last year. Our second truck is a 95 stratus with the same year ford chasis it has almost 80,000 miles on it. It has no major problems and it is no scheduled to be replaced anytime soon.

We have found one of the major things that affects the life of a truck is the amount of beating a truck takes. A lot of short code 3 runs punishes the truck more and shortens it's life. While the long x-ports 100 mile plus average do not seem to affect the truck. They are a lot like cars urban stop and go takes a bigger toll than county and open highway driving does.