NCFPD approves sole-source agreement for ambulance remount

The North County Fire Protection District will be sending one of its ambulances to Life Line Emergency Vehicles for a remount. A 4-0 NCFPD board vote May 22, with Kathleen Thuner absent, authorized the sole source agreement with Life Line Emergency Vehicles.

“This allows us to remount an existing ambulance chassis,” NCFPD fire chief Steve Abbott said.

The sole source contract allows for consistency and maximum safety, as Life Line has provided NCFPD with ambulance modules since before the current ones were manufactured. That’s the same vendor we’ve used for the last 25 years,” Abbott said.

The modules are mounted on a chassis. “Often the chassis will wear out sooner than the box,” Abbott said.

The ambulance Life Line will remount is a 2013 module. The General Motors chassis had problems which were deemed not serviceable locally. “Chevy ultimately bought back the chassis,” Abbott said.

Life Line will remount the ambulance module onto a Ford chassis. Not including the reimbursement from General Motors, the remount will cost the district $112,198 plus California sales tax.

The cost of a remount is approximately $80,000 less than the cost to purchase a new ambulance. “At the rate we go through ambulances that’s a good thing,” Abbott said.

Life Line expects