Author: Metalfab Fire Trucks

Fire trucks are expensive. Breakdowns and their associated downtime can quickly add up, making the ownership of apparatus even more costly. This is why it’s important to plan for regular maintenance on all of your trucks so that costly situations like this don’t arise. Preventative maintenance ensures the unit is ready and fully functional when…

ISO 9001 is the highest standard in quality management certification. Companies holding this certification are dedicated to providing an excellent customer experience and consistently working to streamline processes and improve operational efficiency. The holistic ISO 9001 framework also fosters better management decision making by implementing a fact-based approach. This means the critical decisions that affect…

5 Common Mistakes on Requests for Tender At Metalfab, we sometimes see requests for tenders submitted with documents that appear to come straight from the Internet with little review or modification.  The information may be well out of date, not in conformance with a district’s local regulations and completely inappropriate for the requesting department’s needs. …

The Decision to Winterize Your Fire Truck Once the leaves have fallen from the trees and the air has become brisk, Metalfab experts often face questions by customers about the “right way” to winterize your primer.  Pumps can be run either “wet” or “dry” over the colder season and there are pros and cons to…

In the quickly contracting economic climate, municipal budgets are tight. With fire chiefs looking to save in whatever ways they can, it can be tempting to cut costs on purchases of expensive apparatus, including your truck‘’s chassis cab. Price is just one of the many facets you need to consider when choosing a chassis cab…

A lot of work goes into preparing a Request for Proposal document, or RFP, as you initiate the process of purchasing a new fire truck. It’s not something you want to waste time revising again and again when you find key pieces have been missed. At Metalfab, we want to make sure you get it…

Ask almost any career firefighter about volunteers on their force—as we did the other day while walking through our small town—and you will hear the same thing: the difficulty they’ve had recruiting volunteer firefighters in recent years. It’s a problem sweeping departments across the United States and Canada, and it puts a serious dent in…

One of the most difficult topics to discuss is the high incidence of cancer in firefighters. According to data from the Firefighter Cancer Support Network (FCSN), cancer is the most dangerous threat for firefighters today. Sadly, over 60 percent of firefighter deaths in the line of duty between 2002 and 2017 were due to cancer….

If you are a fire chief, the purchase of a new fire truck may be one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make in your career.   You will be making a decision that will cost your town or municipality no less than $200,000 and probably a whole lot more.  Just recently, we delivered a…

When it comes time to fighting fire, having the right priming system is critical to delivering water as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Without the right system in place—and an operator properly trained to use it—lives and property can unnecessarily be on the line.  Priming systems are necessary to remove air from the suction hose…