For those of you who aren’t aware, I have a love of fire trucks. (Or, if you want to be technical, fire engines.) I like them so much, I have a wish list in my Tivo. I can go in, and tell it to search for programs with the words “fire truck” or “fire engine” in the description. The other day, I was noticing I didn’t have much material to watch on the Tivo. I decided to do a search and see what came up. Usually, there aren’t too many shows featuring fire engines. I was delighted when one was found. Some show called “Trick My Truck” was coming on, and it featured a Pastor who was using a fire engine as a mobile wedding platform. I thought this was a dream come true! Christianity, love, and fire trucks, all in one show! The only thing that could make it better for me would be if the Pastor were playing drums while making pasta! How could I not record it?!
The show starts. There are about eight guys who are going to transform the engine for the Pastor. The acting is very bad, but I figure “Hey, it’s worth it.” They show the fire engine: it’s a 1942 open cab American Lafrance! It’s used, but not abused. I’d buy it (if I had the money!) in an instant! It’s got beautiful lines. I’m in love.
Then they take it back to their shop.
First, they start tearing the truck apart. And, as they are want to do on these car rebuild shows, they just throw the parts they don’t want into a pile. I couldn’t believe it when they threw the original wood roof ladder! Just heaved it! Those things sell for several hundreds of dollars! There’s a wooden roof ladder and a wooden extension ladder set on ebay right now going for $750! And they’re just throwing it onto a shop floor! Then, they did the same thing with the mechanical siren. Again, another highly collectable part worth several hundred dollars, thrown like a football into a heap. I was saddend.
In order to make this thing more like a rolling chapel, they installed a small church structure in the back. I’m ok with that. The hose bed of the truck was just open storage for whatever, so they didn’t really make any significant modifications there. OK. Up next was paint. I don’t have a problem with white fire trucks; it was a tradtional fire truck color, and still is. (In fact, I have a soft spot in my heart for yellow engines.) But this old Lafrance was in such nice shape to begin with, and looked so good in red, that I didn’t think the white paint with roses and tribal pinstriping was all that attractive. Just me.
Which do you prefer? The original, or the new tricked-out white? See all the photos here.
The original, hands down! The pimped up version looks like a parade float… tacky!
The original is way better…:/ that white number looks tacky- like something you would see in vegas…
I have seen this show one other time and they do some odd stuff on it.
“Gag me with a spoon”! – that white thing is not a fire engine!
We, the owners of this most excellent work of art love the new white version. Yes the old one was fun, but it was old! We are in the wedding bussiness, not fire fighting. The crew at Trick my Truck read our minds when they came up with this. We love it. The couples we marry love it. It puts a smile on more faces than it ever did red.
Hey Lisa. I just want to leave for posterity your comment was left on May 27th, 2010, about a year after the original post. Hey, it’s your truck, do with it as you wish. I’m glad you like it in white. I, as an admirer of vintage fire apparatae liked the old girl as she was. I hope you were able to salvage some of those old parts that the car crew just threw around. There was some valuable stuff there!