Gilmer County Fire and Rescue now has two brand new ambulances in service to help save lives in the community.
Division Chief of EMS Will Sergent said it’s been a long time coming, after manufacturing issues caused serious delays.
With funding through the county capital budget, one ambulance was ordered in 2021 by the county, and the other was ordered in 2022.
Once an ambulance truck has been on the road for about four years, averaging 130,000 miles on them, he said they need to be replaced.
“We try to have one [ambulance] budgeted every year, because that’s what we need to maintain the fleet because they put so many miles on them,” Sergent noted.
Each of their four manned stations has an ambulance in service every day. Three backup ambulances are kept in reserve at Station 1 in case any need routine maintenance or experience mechanical issues.
“That way, if a truck goes down, we’re not dropping the coverage we’re providing,” he added. “So whenever we buy a new truck, typically the truck it replaces goes under reserve status, and we drop one out of our reserve status.”
While the new trucks were picked up on March 7, they didn’t go into service until Tuesday, March 18. This is because equipment and radios had to be installed, and every ambulance was inspected before hitting the road.
“The state actually comes and does an inspection of the truck, to ensure that it meets all of the requirements they set forth, to make sure it’s safe for both patients and our providers,” Sergent said.
Now, the process to get a vehicle after placing a bid takes about 18 months, but due to the COVID pandemic, shortages in equipment lengthened the manufacturing process and heavily delayed GCFR from receiving them.
The delays in getting new ambulances did not impact the quality of their care, but he mentioned there were times they had no spare ambulances in their reserve in case of an emergency.
“Our fleet division breathed a collective sigh of relief Tuesday when we finally had them in service because we were overdue on replacing them,” he admitted.
The new ambulances weren’t supposed to come in until June or July due to issues with acquiring the Dodge Ram 5500 trucks the ambulances are built upon. However, he said they worked with the company who upfits their ambulances to get trucks sourced, delivered and painted, speeding up the process.
The county commission was able to make an emergency purchase last year for an ambulance that went in service in November.
“That [ambulance] with these two, having three after such a long wait, is taking a huge burden off of everybody,” he voiced.
The amount of miles providers put on the trucks and the time it’s taken to get new ones, has been major hurdles EMS crews have faced. Now, he said they are advantaged by all of the front-line ambulances having been received in the past two years.
“That puts us in a better position because we’ve had a lot of maintenance issues going on trying to keep older trucks on the road,” Sergent noted.
With a more standardized fleet, he added that it’s a lot easier for their maintenance crews to ensure they have necessary parts to make repairs, and truck longevity that will allow them to provide adequate patient care.
As Gilmer’s population grows and service call numbers increase, he said county officials are looking into adding a fifth, full-time ambulance to their fleet. He hopes that’ll be possible in the commissioner’s 2026 budget.