I'm not sure where to post this reply, so I will do it here.  Not sure if you're talking about "our" truck as the fancy one or not, but it is under my pics.  This truck was paid for by the township and the other townships we cover.  We do like the way this truck is set up, so we wanted our next one to be the same.  This new truck coming in is paid for by "us".  We hold our firemans ball, a dance held in the fire station.  We have a pig roast, band, and drinks.  There is a raffle and door prizes collected by us volunteers in our spare time.  We also have a gun raffle in late fall that coincides with the deer season.  We also have a big money raffle, a 50/50 type raffle.  We have been saving this $$ for many years to replace 106.  This isn't township $$ we spent, it is $$ we had to work to earn.  We bought the truck about 2 years ago.  it has been sitting there until we saved up the money for the tank.  We think it is worth  the $$ to have a truck that can be operated by someone with less experience than some.  About 1/3 to 1/2 of our department can drive a stick, as they drive dump truck or concrete trucks or whatever.  Some feel comfortable driving the big trucks, but dont have the shifting skills from lack of experience.  Some wont drive one at all.  We wanted a truck that could be driven or operated by anyone who felt comfortable enough to do it.  We didn't want the first truck out to leave with one less person someone had to stay back to drive the new stick shift truck. Our dept. 30-35 members serving a full township, part of another and mutual aid with another.  The town we are in is unincorporated.  We have a small budget, but felt it was necessary to have equipment that could be operated by someone with limited training.  We can now roll the engine out with 1000 gallons, followed by two pumper/tankers with 3000 gallons each.

  Oh, we all took driver training last year also.  Everyone had to drive the manuals and the auto.  This will make us all auto.