New ambulance now in service for Houlton

HOULTON, Maine — The town’s newest addition to its ambulance fleet arrived last week. The Houlton Town Council authorized the purchase, in the amount of $171,755 from Autotronics of Madawaska at its May 9 meeting.
The vehicle is a “demo” unit that has about 5,000 miles on the odometer.
    The new vehicle replaces a 2003 ambulance that has logged more than 240,000 miles. By purchasing the demo vehicle, the town saved $28,542 over the cost of a new one. To pay for the ambulance, the town will sign a four-year lease/purchase agreement. Money for the purchase was placed into the 2011 budget last fall, according to Town Manager Doug Hazlett.
“People are going to notice this vehicle because it’s a little different color than the rest of our fleet,” said Houlton Fire Chief Milton Cone. “We did not want to spend the extra money to get a factory paint job, just so it would look like the rest of our fleet.”
Cone said so far the crew seemed “very pleased” with the vehicle. The new unit will be used primarily for in-town emergency responses, while the other, older rigs, will be used for transporting patients to Bangor or other towns.
“We always maintain three ambulances,” Cone said. “We normally have a three-year rotation, so we purchase a new ambulance every three years. Historically, we are seeing the mileage really start to creep up. It used to be that our No. 3 ambulance had about 200,000 miles at the time of trade-in. Now, we are seeing 230,000-250,000 miles is the norm. If this trend continues, we may have to change our three-year rotation to a two-year one.”
The new ambulance was actually purchased a year sooner than it was scheduled, because of the high mileage on the oldest vehicle.