Marshall firefighters and community members helped wash and dry a new ladder truck for the Marshall Fire Department, before the truck was ceremonially “pushed in” to the fire hall. The new truck will replace the MFD’s 1994 ladder truck.

MARSHALL — Bringing a new aerial truck home to the Marshall Fire Station was a team effort. On Monday night, current and retired members of the Marshall Fire Department, city officials and community members all gathered to help wash the new fire truck and “push” it into a garage bay.

Marshall Fire Chief Quentin Brunsvold said the “push-in ceremony” was a way to celebrate the new ladder truck going into service with the fire department.

“I knew we had been approved for a new apparatus that was being built. So I had kind of been thinking about, how can we really set in stone the time when a truck like this was put into service?” Brunsvold said Monday.

Brunsvold got the idea of a push-in ceremony, after reading about firefighter traditions dating back to the 1800s. “After a run, the firefighters would push the heavy horse-drawn fire carts back into the firehouse,” Brunsvold said. “I thought that would be fitting for this.”

Community members were invited to join firefighters to wash the truck. Afterward, fire department members pushed it into the fire station – though not on their own. The fire truck was running, with Doug Brunsvold behind the wheel to help back it into the bay.

The new aerial truck has a 100-foot ladder, that is mounted on the center of the truck instead of at the back end, Brunsvold said. This design made it possible for the truck to fit inside the current fire station.

The new truck will replace a ladder truck the Marshall Fire Department has had since 1994. It’s taken a few years for the truck to be built. Brunsvold said the order for the fire truck was placed in September 2022, and it was completed this April.

The truck cost about $1.475 million, Brunsvold said. About $200,000 of the funding for the truck came from American Rescue Plan Act funding that Lyon County allocated for area cities.

Having a ladder truck was a resource not only for Marshall, but for surrounding communities, said Marshall Mayor Bob Byrnes.

“We’re proud of this, not only for the fire department but also for the area that this will serve,” Byrnes said. “Some of those calls are going to be outside the city. It might be a grain bin rescue, or it might be a high elevation rescue,” he said.