Station 1902

[00:00] Mike Wilbur: Foreign.

[00:13] Chief Ed Mann: Welcome to Station 1902, your go to podcast where we interview subject matter experts on a variety of topics of importance and interest for first responders.

[00:25] This is one more way Provident gives back to the first responder community.

[00:30] I'm your host, Ed Mann and today we have an exciting episode lined up for you.

[00:36] Today I'll be talking with Mike wilbur, a retired FDNY lieutenant from Ladder 27 in the Bronx.

[00:43] I've known Mike for several years now and have been a student in his classes and lectures.

[00:49] His passion for educating firefighters on a variety of topics related to apparatus has gained him national attention and recognition.

[00:58] Mike,

[00:59] welcome to the show. I'm thrilled to have you as a guest.

[01:03] Please take a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners.

[01:07] Mike Wilbur: Hi. Well, thank you very much Ed. And Ed and I go back quite a ways now.

[01:13] Consider him a dear friend and glad that have this opportunity to sit and chat with him and and in a continuing effort to educate the fire service. But for me,

[01:23] I started out in 1974 like most as a volunteer, ended up in a city in New York in 1981.

[01:30] Between both, I have 40 years as a volunteer and 32 years when I retired from the New York City Fire Department where I was on their apparatus committee.

[01:40] And I have been blessed. I've served on all kinds of committees. The safe operation of fire Department tankers, Emergency vehicle operations were penned by FEMA I.F.S.T.A. workbooks over time was asked to join in with those and then wrote for Firehouse magazine and Fire Engineering for the last number of years doing all kinds of apparatus related issues,

[02:07] driving,

[02:08] positioning, aerials,

[02:10] fleet evaluations,

[02:12] apparatus purchasing and alike. And so glad to be here with you. And that's a little bit about me. It's for us, it's in our little company that we formed 30 years ago, emergency Vehicle Response.

[02:27] It's all about apparatus designing, specking, training, driving and safety.

[02:33] So here we are.

[02:35] Chief Ed Mann: So obviously your knowledge and background on a variety of topics related to apparatus,

[02:42] you know, from writing solid apparatus specs to training related to the safe and effective operation. So we're going to try to cover all those during the podcast today. So let's jump into the first question this morning,

[02:56] one of the things you talked about is writing solid apparatus specs. So what are some of the common mistakes departments make when they're writing specifications for apparatus and how can they avoid them?

[03:09] Mike Wilbur: Well,

[03:09] I think first off, writing a spec anymore is almost a misnomer because of the amount of work it takes to write a spec or even to take a Manufacturer spec and make it your own.

[03:25] People, particularly on the volunteer side, just aren't interested in donating that kind of time.

[03:32] And so what we've decided to do over the course of time that's become very popular is to buy fire trucks through buying consortiums like HGAC, the Houston Galveston Group or SourceWell or alike,

[03:50] groups like that where they pre bid the trucks.

[03:53] You can pick your vendor of choice,

[03:56] pick the truck of choice,

[03:59] and you have a sheet of maybe 15 or 20 pages of bullet lists of stuff that you want to get on your truck.

[04:08] And that's pretty much how a lot of them, at least when our work are being purchased right now.

[04:15] I think another problem with just the overall specking is just the size of the committees. We find that 4 to 7 is best,

[04:24] 5 being optimum.

[04:26] So when you start having committees of 8, 10, 12, 14 people,

[04:30] it makes it very difficult for that many people to agree on stuff A and B. Everybody in the industry knows that if you have that many people on the committee, it's going to drive the cost of the truck up because each one of those individuals is going to want to get their thing on the truck.

[04:47] And each thing, averaging 10 grand a thing,

[04:50] you can push the price of the truck up pretty rapidly. So that becomes an issue.

[04:57] One of the things that nobody likes when it comes to specifications is to take for instance, a KME spec and add it in with a peer spec and a Rosenbauer spec, and you have this kind of elephant in the room kind of vehicle that nobody wants to have anything to do with or bid on or anything else if you were going to bid it.

[05:18] So that could be another thing to avoid.

[05:22] Figure out what you want and then it takes a lot of work.

[05:27] Often what we found working with people, you ask the seven committee members, well, how many of you actually read the spec?

[05:33] And I get like one or two fellas, girls, guys, this is what you're buying. This is it.

[05:40] This is your truck,

[05:42] okay? You need to read this and understand it.

[05:46] And I think it becomes very difficult because the trucks now have become so complex.

[05:51] And if you're only buying a new truck every five or 10 years,

[05:55] you're way behind the eight ball to start out with. And then,

[05:59] you know,

[06:00] it depends on your salesman. Now,

[06:02] if you don't have any experience doing this and your salesman doesn't have all that much experience selling something like this,

[06:11] that the project could be in great peril right from the start.

[06:16] Chief Ed Mann: So you mentioned Sourcewell and I want to bring that up our Provident Clients. If you're a client of Provident, you're able to sign up with SourceWell and take advantage of the contracts that SourceWell has already negotiated.

[06:31] We don't have a lot of our clients take advantage of that with SourceWell.

[06:35] And I mean, it's free. I mean, they can go online and because they're a client of Provident, they're able to sign up and use sourcewell.

[06:44] And we've done several webinars and podcasts related to it, but we still don't have a lot of our clients take advantage of using SourceWell.

[06:54] So, and I.

[06:56] Mike, you mentioned something with the sales guy, the salespeople.

[07:00] I mean, so you can have an individual that doesn't have a lot of experience with selling fire trucks,

[07:05] but you could also have an individual that has lots of experience and convinces the apparatus committee maybe to purchase some things they don't really need.

[07:16] And please don't. I don't want anybody to take this the wrong way. I'm not saying that salespeople are shady, but the potential exists for a salesperson to say, well, you know, you really ought to do this and you ought to do that and drive the price of the apparatus up and you end up with something you really didn't need to begin with.

[07:36] Mike Wilbur: And that happens at all the time.

[07:39] I mean, when you take a truck committee out to do the final inspection on their truck and you told them right from the start, this thing is really big.

[07:48] Chief Ed Mann: You.

[07:48] Mike Wilbur: You got a lot of stuff on it.

[07:50] You know, you may want to reconsider. No, no, we want this. Okay. And then you go out to the final inspection and they get a look at their truck completed and built.

[08:00] And oh my God,

[08:03] that thing is huge.

[08:06] Tried to tell you.

[08:07] And my good friend Tom Shan made the greatest comment about fire truck engineering of anybody I ever known.

[08:16] He said, every fire truck I've ever designed fits on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper.

[08:25] That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be right for you. And of course,

[08:30] most salesmen in the industry work on pure commission.

[08:34] And so the more you pay for your truck, the more they're cut.

[08:38] So it behooves them to add as many gizmos and gadgets as.

[08:43] And when we go to do fleet evaluations, we take those same trucks and we look at them over time.

[08:50] Well, who has the most out of service time and who has the most repair costs? And it's that department that got the Visa Gold card and got every bell and whistle imaginable on the truck that they didn't need and now it's sitting out of service half the time getting the bells and whistles fixed because they're constant maintenance problems.

[09:13] And that's another whole issue.

[09:15] Chief Ed Mann: Well,

[09:16] that's an absolute excellent lead into the next question I have.

[09:21] So I know your company provides services to fire departments to assist with fleet evaluation apparatus needs assessments.

[09:29] So while some may think they're one and the same, please explain the difference between a fleet evaluation and an apparatus needs assessment.

[09:37] And then we'll take a deeper dive into fleet evaluations with the next question.

[09:42] Mike Wilbur: Okay. Well,

[09:43] a needs assessment would be a subject matter expert,

[09:47] outside of the political fray or anything in a particular town to come in and drive through the town and evaluate the fire station where the apparatus is going to allegedly fit and find out exactly what the town needs and then find out what the neighbors have.

[10:09] In other words, if you have a tower and all the neighbors have aerials, and we know aerials do some things better than towers and towers do some things better than aerials,

[10:19] you know, unless you couldn't afford another tower, why would you buy an aerial like everybody else has when you could have have one of each? And so one of the jobs I did years ago was in Hood River, Oregon where they hired us to do an aerial needs assessment.

[10:37] And we went out there and it's about as far from my house in Otisville, New York. At the time it was over 3,000 miles away. I'd never been to Hood River.

[10:46] It was a beautiful town. It's in the hills of Oregon. It's just was absolutely gorgeous. They had an all Pierce Fleet. Well ISO came in and said you need to get rid of the telescope and you need to buy a real ladder truck because your town has grown.

[11:01] And so they had their heart set on a three section rear mounted tower.

[11:06] And so I went to Main street with them and we started measuring and they quickly found out that their 3 section mid mounted tower at 0 degrees wouldn't fit, but that a 5 section mid mounted tower would.

[11:19] And so basically by spending a few thousand bucks on an a million plus purchase at the time,

[11:26] we basically saved them from stepping in it. Because if they'd have bought a mid mounted tower with their two and three stories on Main street with no room to move the boom,

[11:37] they would have been very, very embarrassed and somebody would have been asked eventually at the big barn burner downtown,

[11:44] you know,

[11:45] how come it didn't fit?

[11:47] Where's a new truck?

[11:49] What? Well, it doesn't really fit down here. So that's the part of the needs assessment for the apparatus. It's just taking the town, taking the surrounding communities,

[12:02] figuring it out what kind of aerial, if any, that you need and what's going to work the best for you.

[12:08] Knowing that if we can get 95% usage out of the truck into 95% of your area, then we've had a pretty good day versus a fleet evaluation where we get hired in to crawl under and over and through each of your trucks, we weigh them and then we use your maintenance records,

[12:31] we use your staffing records to figure out what the right size of your fleet needs to be. How many units can you actually staffer, how many units do you actually need?

[12:43] And then put them on a 30 year replacement cycle and run them out over time so that taxpayers and elected officials don't have this tremendous burden. And one of the things that people do sometimes because they think they're getting a deal is buy two trucks at once.

[13:02] And that's not a very good thing to do because you may have the funding right now to buy two trucks at one time,

[13:09] but what happens in 20 years when they both wear out at the same time and you only have funding for one? You have really unsumarily kind of screwed, screwed yourself in that regard.

[13:22] And so we try to take these large capital expenditures and we put them out over time where it makes sense and you're going to run the fleet like a fleet.

[13:33] And people say, well, I only have rear four trucks. Yeah, that's a fleet that's.

[13:38] And even smaller towns benefit greatly from,

[13:43] from having their, their fleets evaluated. And we've,

[13:47] we found newer trucks that are overweight. We found trucks that shouldn't have been on the road that somebody could have gotten hurt in.

[13:56] We went to one place in, in Pennsylvania where the chief got up in front of the city council and said, thank God you hired this guy. Probably saved some firefighter lives and maybe even some civilian lives by,

[14:08] by finding out about this truck that needed to be, be redone. So a big difference between tackling the whole fleet and then just doing a more scientific, microscopic needs assessment for a particular piece of apparatus.

[14:27] Chief Ed Mann: So,

[14:27] so let's talk about fleet evaluation. So when you go in to do a fleet evaluation,

[14:33] how about walking our listeners through the steps that you and your staff take when you're doing a fleet evaluation?

[14:39] I'm assuming you kind of crawl under it, through it, on top of it,

[14:44] and look at maintenance records, so on and so forth.

[14:47] Mike Wilbur: Right.

[14:48] We start out by first telling any prospective clients you're Going to like the first four pages of we write, and then the next four pages you're going to hate. But at the end of the day,

[15:01] you're going to get the truth about your, your fleet.

[15:04] And we are an unbiased third party subject matter experts. We're not politically aligned with anybody.

[15:11] And the fleets, quite honestly, unlike a lot of other fire protection work, dealing with staffing and stations and response times can be a little open for interpretation.

[15:23] The fleets are pretty, pretty rock solid. They're just factual.

[15:27] You know, if you have a truck, an engine that's costing you 20 grand a year for the last three years, it's a rust bucket and it's overweight and it's 15 years old, it's probably time that it leaves the fleet.

[15:39] And so we're going to say that.

[15:41] And you know somebody that may be their favorite truck. And you and I both go back a long ways in this business and know that fire trucks are a very emotional,

[15:50] can be a very emotional topic.

[15:53] But we come in and we do this work. And so that's part of the ground rules that we set before we come in. And then I send out a list of 15 different documents that we're going to need.

[16:06] We're going to need your run records for the last three to five years. We're going to need your maintenance records on all your vehicles as far back as they go.

[16:14] We're going to need your testing records. Pump tests, aerial tests, portable ladder tests, hose testing, nozzle testing.

[16:20] When was it done, who did it? What did they find? Did you correct? A lot of times we'll go and see that. An aerial got tested the last three years and it's been broke for three years.

[16:31] And nobody from year three even fixed the deficiencies in the truck.

[16:36] And they keep finding the same deficiencies year after year, and nobody addresses those. So those are things that we find out.

[16:44] We know that in fleet work there's three general problems that everybody has tires that are out of date. The NFPA is clear in 1910 that the tires need to be swapped out every seven years, regardless of what you think or what they look like.

[17:01] We went to one department one time up in Massachusetts and they ended up having to buy 64 tires.

[17:08] So that's a biggie.

[17:10] Overweight trucks.

[17:12] Overweight trucks are a plague in this industry. They've killed firefighters, they've created a lot of accidents and damage.

[17:19] And so we seek out these overweight trucks and we try to get them fixed or get them off the road before somebody gets hurt. And then finally, corrosion issues are huge as well.

[17:30] You know, I don't know what these road commissioners are putting on the roads, but it seems to me like it's nothing short of acid because the undersides of some of these trucks are just going away in as little as five years.

[17:43] So we look, look for that.

[17:46] The records that we require are extensive.

[17:48] We require,

[17:50] like I said, the runs,

[17:51] the staffing,

[17:53] the maintenance records, your current ISO.

[17:56] I started doing an interesting thing because we try to show each fire department in the most positive light to their elected officials.

[18:04] Okay,

[18:06] how many working fires did you go to in the last three years? What apparatus went and how many people were on the apparatus? Figuring that in our line of work, if anybody's going to show up, it's going to be for a working fire and we're going to show them at their best.

[18:21] And some of the data that we've gotten back for that has been just literally scary,

[18:26] Just really scary.

[18:28] And having fire chiefs tell you, man, I knew we were bad, but I didn't think we were that bad.

[18:33] And it's like, yes, sir, yeah, you're that bad. Yep,

[18:38] it is that bad. So we look at all those issues.

[18:43] Obviously, the better the data that we get, the better the report that's going to pop out the other end.

[18:49] We generally do three or four or five days of field work.

[18:54] We'll take a map of your first due and drive literally every street in the first due, if we have to, to figure out,

[19:01] you know, what kind of apparatus you really, really need. What is the risk in many cases? Now, a big shortfall that we've had is portable ladders.

[19:11] We've gone to communities that don't have enough portable ladders to rescue the firefighters that are going to go later lives on the line going to the upper stories of buildings that are cut off from aerial or tower access and are only accessible by portable ladders.

[19:28] The new problem, I guess are these large area houses. I call them McMans. They range anywhere from 8 to 12 to 14.

[19:38] I even have one 16,000 square feet. That was out in the heartland in Missouri.

[19:43] It was three stories. And what is our modus operandi? Right? You get a working fire in there, you go up,

[19:51] you go up to the top floor to search the bedrooms. In the middle of the night,

[19:54] the fire blows out beneath you. You got cut off from the interior stairs, you run to the back windows,

[20:00] and then there are five bedrooms facing the rear yard with at least a 30 foot drop, if not more,

[20:06] and you have one 35 foot, three on any of the rigs that showed up,

[20:12] that's a recipe for disaster.

[20:15] And then we get this,

[20:18] well, we don't have enough people to throw portable ladders.

[20:21] Listen,

[20:22] I don't care who it is,

[20:24] cops, civilians,

[20:26] mutual aid, whatever it is, if you have the equipment on the truck, you have given your people a shot.

[20:32] Without the equipment on the truck, they have no shot and are going to get seriously hurt or perish.

[20:38] So something that we feel very strongly about. So where we've gone of late, we found a lack of portable ladders.

[20:47] Chief Ed Mann: Go ahead, go ahead, Mike. I'm sorry.

[20:49] Mike Wilbur: We have tried to take, I'm not a fan of combination apparatus,

[20:55] but in many cases now due to the lack of staffing, and you can speak to that, you were part of some of the surveys that were done in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania when you were in charge here on just how staffing has declined so rapidly.

[21:13] You know, take an idea like chief Rick Kane did when he was chief in Mannheim Township where he said, okay, we're going to take a heavy rescue truck and we're going to take 102 foot rear mounted tower and I'm going to buy a tractor drawn and we're going to set one side up as a truck and we're going to set the other side up as a rescue and we're going to have one less rig,

[21:35] one less set of staffing and one less set of maintenance over the course of this project.

[21:40] And what was interesting, I got a phone call about three months after the truck was delivered from Chief Kane and he said, oh, by the way, we have an 18% increase in our staffing because everybody wants to come beyond the tractor drawn.

[21:52] So those are just some ideas we try to think out of the box.

[21:57] We try to keep in mind when we do fleets. The amount of money that the community may have we just recommended for one community be about taking they're 75 foot mack tower and just remounting the boom.

[22:10] And there's a cost avoidance error of almost a million dollars by doing it that way.

[22:15] So we try very hard to come up with fleet ideas that will keep the fleet running top notch. We'll give the firefighters the tools and equipment that they need and to keep communities and civilians safe.

[22:30] Chief Ed Mann: Well, that certainly,

[22:32] I mean the fact that you're looking at do they have enough ground ladders to protect their people is certainly a lot deeper dive into a fleet evaluation than one would expect.

[22:44] And so I want to touch on a point. You talked about data.

[22:50] I'm currently involved with a project with a volunteer combination officer section with I chiefs to put another ribbon report together on why data matters.

[23:03] And obviously, we're going to tie it to the changes that are coming from NFIRS to near us.

[23:09] And I know a lot of fire departments use rms, different RMS systems and stuff.

[23:16] Unfortunately, a lot of times the only module the fire department's using is the incident reporting piece. And they don't track the staffing the way it should be tracked. I know when I was a fire chief, we had every module of our RMS activated,

[23:34] and I could tell you on any given day how many people responded to what type of call,

[23:41] the hour of the day, the whole nine yards.

[23:44] Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of departments keep that kind of data.

[23:49] And with the RMS systems that are available today,

[23:53] it's pretty easy to do. Yeah, it's a little bit of money up front, but in the long term,

[23:58] data matters,

[24:00] and it can tell you a story that.

[24:04] And again, it can help you with your local governments, too.

[24:09] Mike Wilbur: That's what we do.

[24:10] Okay. You can't go to the local elected official anymore and say, yeah, I'm a volunteer, I'm a nice guy, and I want a new truck at 1.3 million for an engine or 2.8 million for a ladder that doesn't work anymore.

[24:26] Everything now is about justification and the good old days of the firefighters wearing the white hats and being good guys, which we still are,

[24:38] but in this world of data and expense.

[24:43] And you need to basically write a justification paper every time you want to buy a new fire truck. And when you have maintenance records that say the truck is out of service a lot and it's costing you a fortune.

[24:59] And by the way, it's rusting pretty badly because you wouldn't give us enough money to maintain it. And it's 20 years old,

[25:06] and it did.

[25:08] It's averaged 350 runs a year for the past five years.

[25:12] And we're getting it out.

[25:14] You have started to lay a foundation where getting another replacement vehicle for that is almost undisputable.

[25:23] And it's all driven by the data.

[25:27] City managers, town managers,

[25:30] even fire district commissioners.

[25:34] It's all about the data. And you would be surprised, I think,

[25:38] how many places we go where it just lacks this kind of data collection.

[25:45] Chief Ed Mann: I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, and let's face it, in most communities,

[25:51] the local government officials are depending on property taxes to be able to generate the revenue to give to the fire department,

[25:59] whether it's a volunteer department or a career department. It's based on taxes.

[26:05] And to go to a local government official and say, well, we need $2 million to buy a new ladder truck without any data.

[26:13] And the local government officials, I mean, let's face it, nobody wants to pay more taxes,

[26:18] and government officials certainly don't like to raise taxes.

[26:22] But if you have the data to support the need,

[26:26] it makes it a little more difficult for the local government officials to tell you no,

[26:33] that's absolutely correct.

[26:34] Mike Wilbur: Yep.

[26:34] Chief Ed Mann: So, Mike, I want to share something with you, and I'm going to go off script here for a minute. So when I was a fire commissioner,

[26:41] I had a fire department here in Pennsylvania, bought a used aerial device.

[26:46] And when they bought it,

[26:47] they got a certificate from a company that said that this thing had been tested. And then it was in good shape.

[26:55] Well, shortly after they bought it, they actually brought Seagrave in to do a test on it and it failed miserably.

[27:04] In fact, at the point, Seagrave told them, you should take it out of service. It shouldn't be in service.

[27:09] Which prompted the fire chief to call me to see whether or not there was a lemon law in PA on fire apparatus.

[27:16] And he sent me the certificate where this thing had been supposedly tested. And it was a company in Arizona.

[27:25] And I contacted several people in the Phoenix area and this company didn't exist.

[27:32] So it kind of drove me to the. To the point where,

[27:37] you know,

[27:39] can just anybody hang a shingle out that says, hey, I can test your ladder truck or your fire apparatus and it's legit. I mean, is there anybody who polices that industry in our business?

[27:53] And how do you avoid getting snookered by somebody that is allegedly a reputable testing company?

[28:03] And then, you know, you spend a bunch of money and buy something to find out you bought something that should have never been put in service.

[28:10] How can a fire department avoid that?

[28:13] Mike Wilbur: Well,

[28:14] I think it's part of doing due diligence. And I went to a place in Massachusetts where we were doing a fleet evaluation. I had them take their 75 foot Quinn out in the back parking lot.

[28:24] I want you to run this out the back at 0 degrees, 75ft.

[28:29] And they got it out there and oh yeah, it was just recently tested.

[28:34] Well, you better get your money back because when I put a tape measure on was twisted 7, 8 of an inch from right to left.

[28:42] I mean, just a visible twist in the ladder. I said, you can't use this.

[28:47] I said,

[28:48] who did this? So,

[28:51] like you alluded to, it doesn't appear to me that there's anybody that is any kind of oversight on these folks at all.

[29:03] So what you need to do is have the standard bearers like UL national testing.

[29:10] Obviously local people can do it, but you're going to want to look into that to see and do your due diligence. You know,

[29:18] how many aerials have you done around here? Who have you done,

[29:21] how long have you been doing it and kind of get a sense for,

[29:25] for, for what you're getting yourself into. I mean, it's no different than consultants,

[29:30] right? Consultants. You know, some have integrity and some will write anything on a piece of paper that you want them to and take your money. So there's no,

[29:40] there's no lease out there. That's policing some of these,

[29:44] what could be very expensive expenditures.

[29:47] So you want to do due diligence. And probably at the end they should have went to Seagrave right from the start to take it to a service center and to evaluate.

[29:57] But we have a list of things.

[29:59] When you buy a used truck that you should really try to do,

[30:04] you should certainly look under it and make sure it's not rusting to death for sure.

[30:11] Find out if it's going to need tires by looking at the date.

[30:14] Go back and see that the pump and the aerial were tested. If you're buying a quint and how long it was tested,

[30:20] look through the maintenance records,

[30:23] take the fluids and get the fluids evaluated to make sure that you don't have antifreeze leaking in the engine oil and on the verge of blowing a head gasket, which could be a very expensive repair for you.

[30:35] So you want to get that checked out. You want to weigh the truck and get its in service weight to make sure that when you take it on that you're not going to overload it with your tools and equipment,

[30:44] find out what it's axled for and do due diligence like that when you try to buy.

[30:51] Chief Ed Mann: That kind of leads me to the next question, Mike, and that is obviously you and your business are very reputable.

[30:58] Have you ever given an apartment advice when you did a fleet assessment or an apparatus needs assessment and they basically said, yeah, okay, thanks,

[31:08] go away. I mean, where they basically ignored your advice.

[31:12] Mike Wilbur: Sure, sure.

[31:16] Chief Ed Mann: That has to be frustrating.

[31:18] Mike Wilbur: Well, it is, because at the end of the day, I'm retired.

[31:23] I have a pension from the city of New York for my work there.

[31:27] This isn't about the money for me. It's about the work and making sure that fire departments, the people riding these rigs are safe, that they're safe to drive Safe to operate off of,

[31:40] safe to operate to be on,

[31:42] safe to have civilians around them, driving.

[31:45] It's all. Our whole company has been based right from its inception in firefighter safety.

[31:51] Okay. And so when we make recommendations, take for instance, what's the greatest craze now? Black fire trucks with black ladders.

[32:02] Good Lord, man.

[32:03] Can you use a good common sense that the good Lord gave you?

[32:07] The first time I ran across that was back in 2007 in Needham, Texas. They took me out to the back just before an aerial class. They picked me up at the airport on Friday, took me to dinner.

[32:19] And Friday evening, in the back of the station, we're putting this 107 up. And by the time the operator got a 50 foot in the air, he had no clue where the tip of that was at all.

[32:28] And it's not. Puyalla has lights on it. It doesn't matter because the black of night and the black of the aerial meld in.

[32:36] And as an operator, you're at a complete disadvantage. And so people are allowed to do stuff like that. And we tell them. I actually,

[32:45] we just had a consulting job doing a set of specs, and we told them that, no,

[32:51] we're not going to sign on to that. Well, we want to do that. Well, then pay us what you owe us and then we'll. We'll separate. We'll go our separate ways.

[32:58] And you do you and Will do us. We're not going to sign on anything that's just blatantly unsafe.

[33:06] You know, you get the truck painted black,

[33:09] which is an upcharge, and then you add a bazillion dollars worth of lights, which is another upcharge for what are we doing except wasting a lot of money. It looks great at the parade.

[33:19] I mean, if that's what you're buying it for.

[33:22] I mean, but if you're actually buying a fire truck for fires,

[33:27] and I'm sure you're going to get some comments online and stuff, because there's some very strong, particularly with young firefighters, emotion about having all this stuff blacked out, but it's just not safe.

[33:41] Chief Ed Mann: I obviously hit a nerve with you, and it's a nerve with me, too.

[33:45] It's frustrating when people come to you for advice and you give them legitimate advice and they ignore you. I ran into the issue as a fire chief. I ran into it as a fire commissioner.

[33:57] I run into it today working for an insurance company, whether it's an insurance policy or related to risk management.

[34:06] And I finally. It used to really bother me, but I finally got to the point, Mike. It's like, look, I told you the truth.

[34:14] And if you can't stand the truth,

[34:17] that's on you. That's not on me.

[34:20] Mike Wilbur: That's how we feel. And you and I can both lay our heads on the pillow at night and sleep better knowing that we tried to make a difference. And if the people in charge didn't listen,

[34:32] it's on them. It's not on me.

[34:34] I tried to keep you from stepping in.

[34:37] Chief Ed Mann: I can look in a mirror, and I'm happy with me. And as long as I can do that at the end of the day.

[34:43] Well,

[34:44] if you've elected to ignore the advice I've given you,

[34:48] okay,

[34:49] I told you the truth.

[34:52] And if something goes wrong,

[34:54] please don't come back to me. Because if you do, I'm going to put my arm on your shoulder and whisper in your ear, I told you so.

[35:02] Mike Wilbur: Yeah. And you have every right to do that. And, you know, from my 30 years of EVR and Firehouse magazine and writing and doing all this stuff,

[35:12] I get dogged by attorneys all the time.

[35:16] You know,

[35:17] I've refused hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars over my 30 years because I refuse to go into a court of law. I don't want to get involved in any of that.

[35:28] It's a company policy that we don't.

[35:30] We just simply will not do that.

[35:33] Chief Dunn told me, my mentor, Vinnie Dunn, said we can win the battle in the classroom, teaching each other. We can't win the battle in the courtroom slinging mud at each other.

[35:41] You need to go back to the classroom and do what you do best and teach. Yeah.

[35:45] Chief Ed Mann: And at the end of the day, the only person that gets rich out of that is the lawyers.

[35:49] Mike Wilbur: Right, Right. And. And,

[35:52] you know, I may not.

[35:53] You know,

[35:55] I may not have as much money as I could have, but I get up each morning, I look this ugly mug in the mirror, and I'm just fine.

[36:01] Chief Ed Mann: That's a fact.

[36:03] So let's move into training. Mike, I brought you to Mifflin county here in central Pennsylvania several years ago to do some training. And you did it on the aerial tower operation and placement.

[36:14] And still today, I get feedback from people that attended it that were very happy with what they learned that day.

[36:23] And, you know, I had an old friend of mine say years ago,

[36:26] you know, if you make a mistake with an engine, someone could get hurt, but you make a mistake with an aerial, somebody could get killed.

[36:34] So when you go around the country and do your training related to the Operation of aerials.

[36:41] What are some of the weaknesses you've seen or the beliefs that students have within their departments about the operation of aerials?

[36:50] Mike Wilbur: Well,

[36:51] it's interesting. I think it goes back, Ed, right to the start of this podcast when we talked about speccing the apparatus.

[36:59] Bigger isn't better.

[37:01] Okay,

[37:02] if. If your listeners don't get anything else out of this podcast today,

[37:07] I want them to understand this.

[37:10] When you sit in an apparatus committee meeting,

[37:14] you need to ask yourself,

[37:16] even though you may have silver hair and you may be around for a long time and you may be chair of the truck committee,

[37:22] who's going to drive this thing?

[37:24] Okay, who is going to drive this truck over the next 20 or 30 years? First off, it's not going to be you, because if you have silver hair and you're in your waning years, you're going to be dead.

[37:35] So who are you leaving this to? Who's going to drive this piece of equipment?

[37:40] And most young people today are more familiar with the Toyota Corolla automatic, £2,000 and a gaming controller than they are with a big, heavy truck.

[37:50] And I can't tell you the number of places that we've gone doing all kinds of work. Hey, Chief, how many drive the 190 inch wheelbase engine over there? Well, I got 22.

[37:59] How many drive the 102 foot Grumman Aerial Cat that's 54ft long? I got six.

[38:05] And I actually tried to get two of my guys to get trained on that and get turned over and they refused because it was too big.

[38:14] So I think there are some trucks now that have become available that have size in mind.

[38:21] They still have great capability,

[38:23] but they're not nearly as heavy, they're not nearly as long, they're not nearly as high.

[38:28] And I think that has to be part of this discussion when it comes to training,

[38:34] if you buy something so big and so heavy and so long that it intimidates young drivers,

[38:42] you've spent $2 million to buy a piece of equipment that's going to sit.

[38:47] Chief Ed Mann: Yep.

[38:49] So have you found any other things, you know,

[38:52] especially let's say with the placement of aerial apparatus where there's,

[38:59] there are weaknesses that you find in the training programs?

[39:03] Mike Wilbur: Well, I think,

[39:05] first off, and you'll probably get letters about this too,

[39:09] the NFPA many years ago took the word training out of getting a new truck, a new delivery.

[39:17] When a vendor delivers a truck to you, you are getting a product familiarization and demonstration.

[39:25] You are not getting training.

[39:27] Very few delivery agents from fire apparatus manufacturers have the experience,

[39:35] particularly with aerial equipment where they've taken them to fires and set them up. They're on the road all the time delivering fire trucks.

[39:42] So they don't have that expertise. So they're not training you.

[39:45] And yet in many cases,

[39:48] when you go to departments. Oh, yeah, we had the new delivery training.

[39:53] That's not training. You did not get trained.

[39:56] Okay. You had some guy come in and tell you what all the buttons and gizmos did.

[40:02] That's.

[40:03] And show you basically how the truck worked. But. But that's not training in its pure form. So the training generally is good. Training is based on experience.

[40:19] Well, if you're in an area of the country that doesn't use aerials much and you're looking locally to get training,

[40:27] it's probably not going to be that great. And it's not anybody's fault except that it's just a lack of experience.

[40:35] Experience is everything.

[40:37] In the case of our company, my young son Nick is out doing it. We're training on all kinds of apparatus all over the place, doing all kinds of wonderful things.

[40:48] And because of his experience,

[40:52] he does a really, really good job with that,

[40:55] with that part of the training, because he has that.

[40:58] That experience that he brings to the table. And people aren't like. I went one time to a place that had a truck that had envelope controls and the vendor dropped his truck off,

[41:12] and the people that they dropped the truck off to didn't even understand how the envelope controls worked.

[41:18] I had him put the boom out at zero degrees as far as it would go.

[41:22] Well, it's 115 foot truck and it went out only like. Angle is like 83ft. And I said, now there's something wrong. I said, look at the computer. What is the computer telling you?

[41:34] Well, there's four people in the bucket. You're never going to have four people in the bucket here, are you? Well, no, just one. Put one in and then all of a sudden the truck goes out the rest of the way.

[41:45] It could have gone, but it was limited by the computer.

[41:48] Well,

[41:49] that should have been something that the vendors should have imparted on the students there,

[41:56] and it just wasn't. So the trucks have become far more complex and even that new delivery demonstration and familiarization is questionable depending on who does it and their level of knowledge and expertise.

[42:13] Even with the truck.

[42:15] Chief Ed Mann: Well, you know,

[42:16] I could deliver an engine to somebody and give them real training on engine and engine company ops. I would never attempt to do it with a truck.

[42:25] And that kind of goes to the next question. You know you spent most of your career doing things that truckees do,

[42:33] yet your company offers training on engine company proficiency, positioning and operations. So how about walking our listeners through the training that your company does related to engine company ops? Because I'm going to make an assumption here.

[42:48] You're probably not the lead instructor on engine company ops.

[42:52] Mike Wilbur: I think that is a safe assumption. And I'll go on further to tell you I don't train people on engines. Although in my day when I was a volunteer, I'd like to think I was a pretty good pump operator.

[43:05] But that's because I had a real hard nosed guy. I thought he hated me because he would take me out. The first truck I learned on was a 19 and 47 Mack.

[43:15] It took 17 steps to get water out of the booster tank and he would beat me up. And we went through the couple of trucks that we had.

[43:27] And I thank God for his treatment every day of my career now because he really taught me how to move water and what pumping a fire truck was, was really about.

[43:39] He was,

[43:40] he was tough, man, he was tough. But what a good education I got.

[43:45] But as it goes now, I wouldn't even attempt to do any of that because we have people that do a far better job. But for our engine course, it's divided up in five sections.

[43:55] Five segments.

[43:57] Each segment focuses on different aspects of engineering the engine company.

[44:02] The class will focus on specific apparatus and the jurisdiction of the department's pumpers.

[44:07] Today's fire service has the trend of including pumps on all new apparatus engines, aerials, rescue and everything in between.

[44:14] It's being sold with various size pumping.

[44:17] It's fundamentally important that members truly understand the capacity and the capabilities of their engines and pumps along with how to apply them to their unique staffing and jurisdictional needs.

[44:28] The engine company course is designed for firefighters, apparatus operators, training officers, line officers, maintenance personnel and chief officers that are expected to have intimate knowledge of these apparatus.

[44:39] The course will also help stakeholders and training officers meet NFPA fire flows and understand how the purchase of hose and nozzles affects firefighting operations.

[44:48] They work a lot on establishing target flows.

[44:52] I remember one of the first times we did the class.

[44:55] The training center had a 275,000 gallon holding tank and we almost drained it. We moved so much water. So we move a lot of water. We use all different kinds of hose and streams.

[45:06] And the objective of the course is really to give much better understanding of current engine company apparatus so that they can understand what they're doing,

[45:16] understanding Hydraulic calculations to hose and establishing department fire flow rate for whatever fire flow your jurisdiction would need.

[45:28] Chief Ed Mann: Okay, so our listeners don't.

[45:31] Just to give you a heads up, listeners, when you get to session notes and stuff for this podcast, there'll be links to Mike's website where you can contact Mike and his company if you're interested in having this training done in your department.

[45:45] So, Mike, I also know that you do emergency vehicle operations courses. And before I hit you with the question, I got to tell you,

[45:54] and this is for our listeners too,

[45:56] because this issue just.

[45:59] It drives me crazy.

[46:01] So I get copies of claims that we get on our property and casualty policy,

[46:08] and I,

[46:10] I am still so perplexed by the fact that,

[46:14] that our leading claim month after month is people backing fire trucks into objects,

[46:22] backing them into other buildings, backing them into other vehicles,

[46:27] et cetera, et cetera.

[46:30] And a year or two ago, I went to a combination department to do an EVOC class.

[46:36] And the first day of the class, when I mentioned things about using spotters,

[46:41] they thought it was a joke. In fact, they were making jokes about it when we went on break.

[46:48] How do we overcome that kind of attitude, Mike?

[46:52] What do we do to stop what I believe are preventable incidents in our business?

[46:59] Mike Wilbur: I'm like you, Ed. You hit a nerve again. I mean,

[47:03] I don't consider myself a hard guy, but it's. If I was chief of department and you backed my truck into something and you were a career guy, you're fired. If you're a volunteer, you ain't driving for a long time, if ever again.

[47:15] It's just completely unacceptable.

[47:18] Here's what happened. I'll take you to a story from my job, which is apropos here.

[47:25] So we had always had a backing policy,

[47:29] and all of a sudden a battalion chief's vehicle, because the chief didn't get out in the rainstorm, backed over a woman at 5:00 at night in the rainstor.

[47:38] She was on her way to Mass.

[47:40] Saturday, Mass.

[47:42] And killed her.

[47:44] And in big municipal departments like the city in New York, there's a lot of rules.

[47:50] And we have rules. And now we have rules.

[47:54] We had ruled that everybody should be in a seatbelt. And for a long time the compliance rate was maybe 1% until we put new seatbelts that they could actually use in the trucks.

[48:02] And it got a little better.

[48:04] But there is a rule in a New York City fire department, if you back over something or hit something in reverse, you're going to get charges.

[48:15] It's not up to negotiation it's not up to.

[48:20] You're just. My brother could be driving me in the front seat of the apparatus.

[48:25] And as a company officer, it's out of my hands. It goes right to headquarters. When they see it was in reverse,

[48:31] he's getting charges and it's a matter of how much money he's losing, how many days vacation,

[48:37] what the penalty's going to be,

[48:40] but. And how egregious the incident was.

[48:43] In New York, they have people on fire trucks that should get up out of their seats and help the vehicle back without hitting anything. It's just unacceptable.

[48:55] I remember you years ago for Firehouse.

[48:58] I got the most pictures ever in an article in Firehouse. We went out to an abandoned Runway on Edwards Air Force Base and we used military hand signals how these guys backed up and maneuvered trucks around.

[49:14] And I wrote this whole expose.

[49:16] And you talk about being frustrated doing this.

[49:19] We ran the article. Within 30 days, somebody backed into a firehouse in Wisconsin and backed over to fire chief and killed him.

[49:27] It's just we have not found a new way to kill firefighters in and around fire trucks. We keep killing them the same way over, over and over again.

[49:38] How did we get out of backing accidents in New York?

[49:41] Leadership.

[49:44] You got to be a leader. You got to draw a line in the sand if you want it to stop.

[49:49] Chief Ed Mann: So when I was the fire commissioner,

[49:51] I dealt with a line of duty death that involved.

[49:56] Well, there were two individuals got backed over by the same fire truck. Unfortunately, one individual died.

[50:02] The other individual was severely injured.

[50:04] I can tell you, when I was a fire chief,

[50:07] if you backed a fire truck up without a spotter, our bylaws in a volunteer department allowed me to suspend you for 90 days without taking it to the executive committee.

[50:18] You got 90 days. There was. We didn't debate it.

[50:22] There was no discussion about it. You got, and I'm not saying suspended from the driver's list for 90 days. You got suspended from the firehouse for 90 days,

[50:33] and rightfully so.

[50:35] I rarely had an issue with people back in fire trucks up without spotters. Same with seat belts.

[50:42] If you were in the officer seat or you were riding a piece of apparatus about a seatbelt and you got caught, there was hell to pay.

[50:52] But every month, Mike, it's our leading claim is fire departments continuing to back stuff into a recent one. I read they backed it into the firehouse, backed it into a boat, and tore water pipes off the walls inside the building because they didn't have a spotter.

[51:13] So I think we beat that to Death. I just wish there was some way that we could convince people to knock it off.

[51:24] Mike Wilbur: I've tried. I mean, I actually helped Steve Austin and Jack Sullivan and their group. We went to New Jersey and we did a whole video on how to properly back a fire truck.

[51:35] And it's on the respondersafety.com a website. And it was about a 20 minute training tape with the hand signals and everything.

[51:44] And still,

[51:45] I mean like some that really care about this topic, like you,

[51:50] you know, you work tirelessly trying to stop this and people think it's a joke until somebody gets hurt or killed and then it's not so funny anymore. So.

[51:59] Chief Ed Mann: So probably eight years ago, prominent we spent the money and did a 10 minute video on the safe backing of apparatus.

[52:08] We did one on intersections, safely navigating intersections and they're about 10 minutes long.

[52:15] And we're trying to find a way that we can incorporate it into our insurance policies that our insured have to take away to review it every year with their membership.

[52:26] And they could do it online. It wouldn't be that difficult to do.

[52:31] We would be able to automatically track who watched it, so on and so forth for those two areas, safely navigating intersections and safe backing practices. And we could eliminate a lot of claims not only with tearing equipment up,

[52:50] but injuries as well if we could just get people to pay attention to those two things. So I think we beat that one to death.

[53:00] And you know, Mike, I think all we can do is try to eat the elephant one bite at a time and convert as many people as we can as often as we can.

[53:12] And you know,

[53:13] the one thing that I think sometimes we forget is no one ever tells us when we win one. Mike,

[53:21] you know,

[53:22] if we go do a class and you convince a department that they should have a policy with safe backing and they've prevented three or four accidents as a result of it, they don't send you an email and tell you, hey,

[53:36] you taught us something that saved us some damages or saved some injury.

[53:42] We only ever find out about it when something bad happens.

[53:47] So we can't get frustrated and give up on it.

[53:52] Because we rarely know when we get a win, Mike. We only know when we get a loss.

[53:58] Mike Wilbur: Amen. That's true.

[54:02] Chief Ed Mann: So Mike, I want to move into a subject that is getting a lot of attention nationally.

[54:08] And I'm sure you know, recently there were articles that hit the newspaper and the news that Congress is making an inquiry to the Rev group related to the rising cost of apparatus,

[54:20] lengthy delays in delivery, a new Apparatus and cost and delays in getting parts for repairs.

[54:27] Do you want to comment on that issue?

[54:30] Mike Wilbur: Sure.

[54:32] I would just say this.

[54:35] Even being involved in this all the time,

[54:40] I'm constantly learning.

[54:41] And so three years ago in Arizona, I had a class of 63 people taking a class,

[54:48] and it was an apparatus related class.

[54:51] And some of them were west coast, some of them were east coast. And I said, okay, we have this big whiteboard here.

[54:56] Let's list every fire truck manufacturer that you can think of.

[55:01] And of course, on the west coast there you had Crown Coach, which went out of business.

[55:07] Western states,

[55:10] other big names that I can't recall that we're out on the west coast. And then you move to the east coast with Mac and Han and Maxim and Peter Persh and son.

[55:22] And so we had this whole board and there was 96 wire truck companies that we could think of. And there probably were more, but that's the ones that this group of 63 could think of.

[55:36] And then we started consolidating and crossing those off that no longer existed or were out of business.

[55:44] And we ended up with the big three,

[55:47] the Rev Group,

[55:49] Rosenbauer Corporation and Oshkosh Pierce and then about a dozen of everybody else.

[55:57] You have,

[55:58] obviously those three companies control the lion's share of the,

[56:05] of the market share.

[56:06] And then there are, you know,

[56:09] medium builders like the Seagraves and Suptans of the world that have,

[56:13] you know, not as much market share for sure.

[56:16] And then you have, you know, mom and pop builders and regional builders that build trucks.

[56:21] And so maybe there's a dozen or 15 people. So we went from 96 down to a dozen or a dozen and a half people that build fire trucks. And if you're from our age group, it's, it's.

[56:35] I liken a situation to the airline industry.

[56:39] Back when I first started flying, there was Eastern and TWA and Pan Am and Continental.

[56:45] Now there's five,

[56:46] there's Delta, American,

[56:48] Southwest,

[56:50] I guess you consider Hawaiian Air,

[56:53] you know, that there's maybe four or five big carriers, there's a few discount carriers,

[56:59] and that's it.

[57:00] And so when, when companies consolidate and control more of a marketplace on whatever commodity it is,

[57:08] it's almost inevitable that, that, that prices are,

[57:12] are going to go up and for whatever reason,

[57:15] you know, and there's obviously the apparatus industry took a hit with COVID Some companies after Covid had people retiring an astronomical rate and how much cardinal knowledge on how to build and construct fire trucks walked out the door not to be replaced with much of anything.

[57:35] So I think that kind of sums up where it is. I know that it looks like there's going to be a congressional investigation and I don't know where that's going to take us.

[57:48] But one thing is factually sure. The we actually did an engine tanker for New Carlisle, Indiana back in 2019. They took delivery of it in August.

[58:01] And we specked out a truck like that last year for a fire department in Pennsylvania that was pretty much identical.

[58:09] And the new Carlisle truck cost 800-8000 and the new truck that was contracted for for Pennsylvania cost 1.5 million.

[58:22] So the cost of the truck almost doubled in four and a half years.

[58:27] So the cost of the trucks has gone through the roof and obviously the waiting times at 36, 48, 54 months to wait for a new truck.

[58:39] Now some the apparatus industry would like to streamline and have less of a customization and more of a kind of assembly line where you could offer popular accessories to the truck that would function in most areas.

[58:57] And you can get them as stock models for probably in about half the time, 24 months with some companies are trying to run programs like that,

[59:08] but it's very difficult. It's difficult to plan fleets, it's difficult to budget for fleets.

[59:14] And you talk to insiders in the industry and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.

[59:19] You go to the apparatus related shows and you talk to apparatus insiders and we may catch up a little bit.

[59:28] But yeah,

[59:31] there's just not a bright spot in any of those. And then when we go to do final inspections, we would go to a fire truck factory pre pandemic.

[59:41] And if you had a punch list of 15 or 20 things and we use the term no showstoppers, you know, paint problem, wires hanging,

[59:51] some,

[59:51] maybe some compartment issues a little bit,

[59:56] but nothing that would make you refuse delivery of the truck,

[01:00:00] you know. And now you go to the same fire truck factory and we're getting punch lists of 70, 80, 90, 120 problems with the truck. Wrong color paint, wrong components on the truck,

[01:00:15] two deck two nozzles in the bucket instead of one. I don't know how you make that mistake even, but these are some of the things that we found over time.

[01:00:23] So it's a buyer beware. If you do not know what you're doing buying a truck, you need to get help. Regardless if it's our company or somebody else.

[01:00:33] You. There's, there's plenty of other people out there that can spec fire trucks too, that have some technical knowledge.

[01:00:45] But unlike a car, if you lease a car and you don't like it, in three or four years, you give it back.

[01:00:52] With a fire truck, if you screw it up,

[01:00:56] you own it for 15, 20, 25 years. And you got to constantly look at that thing that nobody wants to drive and nobody wants to be around because it doesn't fit the mission of the community.

[01:01:10] And so with the cost of the trucks, the amount of time it takes to get them, and the amount of time you're going to have to keep them,

[01:01:17] like I said, if you.

[01:01:19] And you may think you know what you're doing,

[01:01:21] but if you only buy a truck every once in a while,

[01:01:24] you're at a complete disadvantage. You really need to get some kind of technical expertise to do that. Otherwise the end product could be something that nobody's going to like. And it's funny, you go to communities and I'm sure you've done it, and you ask about,

[01:01:40] you know, the trucks around this community. And what's interesting is, is that somebody will pop up in a class and say, yeah, that that truck stinks and they should have never bought that.

[01:01:51] And,

[01:01:52] you know, so there's unhappiness,

[01:01:54] you know, and some of it, again, could be the vendor, some of it could be the apparatus committee asking for outlandish things, some could be a combination of both groups.

[01:02:03] But in any event, somebody's stuck with a truck that nobody really wants and it's, you know, three or four years old.

[01:02:11] And that's sad,

[01:02:12] truly sad,

[01:02:14] especially with the cost of them.

[01:02:16] Chief Ed Mann: So. Well, that kind of. I think he already answered my next question. And that was.

[01:02:21] As we end the. Near the end of the podcast, do you have any last words of wisdom to offer our listeners? And I think you just offered some pretty wise words of wisdom to our listeners.

[01:02:32] So,

[01:02:33] Mike, please, please get help.

[01:02:36] I can't. Yeah, and get, get good, reputable help.

[01:02:40] Yes,

[01:02:41] even more so. So, Mike, I can't thank you enough for joining us today and sharing your thoughts with our listeners.

[01:02:48] I am forever hopeful our listeners will take some useful nuggets with them,

[01:02:53] and by knowing better,

[01:02:55] they'll do better.

[01:02:56] The links to Mike's website Emergency Vehicle Response will be included in the podcast notes.

[01:03:03] Mike will be my guest for our live webinar on June 30 at 7pm Eastern Standard Time.

[01:03:09] So stay tuned for the title and description of that webinar. I know it'll be a dandy to sign up for that webinar and review our previously recorded webinars, visit our link in our Episode Notes.

[01:03:22] Share this episode this podcast with your colleagues. You can send them our subscription link, also found in the Show Notes.

[01:03:30] Lastly, to our listeners, if you have any questions or need additional information,

[01:03:34] or if you have an idea for a future webinar or podcast,

[01:03:38] please email us@infoprovidentins.com Station 1902 is signing off. Until next time,

[01:03:47] stay safe for your family. Safe.