Looking for an ambulance

[jbrandy]

Hello I am a member of a volunteer fire company in Maryland, does anyone have an knowlege of municpal departments that may donate excessed apparatus. We are looking for initiate an EMS service but have no capital for a unit. Thanks for any input.

[FireDoc99]

Not sure how they set their criteria for donations but at my dept. in Colorado we had a unit that AMR donated to us when they took it out of service. We had it repainted for our department but they got all due credit, even had a place on the truck that said "donated by AMR".

I worked at another dept. where our rescue was donated by the county EMS when they replaced it.

Here in Pensacola Rural Metro donated an old unit to the local community college for use as a training unit for the EMT and "P" schools.

Worst they can do is say no.

[ElectricHoser]

Ambulance dealers often end up with more trade-in used ambulances than they can move off the lot. Call around, one of them may give one to you for cheap, or as a tax write-off, or in exchange for you putting a "donated by" label on it.

[Chamelienne]

Sounds like a good time to look into grants. When I went to the DHS workshop, they said departments without any equipment had a high chance of getting funding. Plus, this year departments are allowed to apply for both a vehicle and other equipment even if they've received a vehicle before. There are a lot of resources online, and if you go with a pro grant writer (other than myself or one of this site's regulars) you'll have to make sure they know about the service as well as the grant because approval committees often consist of fire/EMS members.
And if you need any writing/proofreading help, well, I need the money, heheh.