Only 2 of Toledo’s 7 Ladder Trucks Are Running — and Firefighters Say the Fix Costs $25 Million
TOLEDO — Only two of Toledo’s seven ladder trucks were recently operational, according to the city’s firefighters union — and the union says it will take more than $25 million to buy the new rigs the department needs.
The warning comes from Toledo Firefighters Local 92, The Ohio Flyover reported Friday, citing WTOL 11. Ladder trucks — the rigs with long aerial ladders that reach upper floors and rooftops — are the department’s tool for rescues and fires in multi-story buildings. When most of them are out of service, the ones left have to cover the whole city.
Union president Joe Cira has been warning for weeks that the department is running with no margin for error. Speaking to Toledo City Council’s finance committee on Oct. 28, Cira described a department stretched past its limits: ambulances and engines breaking down with no backup available, and a call volume that has grown three to four times since the 1980s with only about ten more personnel, according to the Toledo Free Press.
“As I stand here, one of the ambulances in West Toledo is out of service. If an ambulance breaks down right now or gets into an accident, there is no backup for it,” Cira told the committee. He said the department faced the same problem with its fire engines — Engine 25 was in an accident last month, and mechanics worked late into the night to get it back in service because there was no spare.
The apparatus problem is not new, and it is not quick to fix. In a first-quarter 2025 report to council, Deputy Chief Daniel Brown Martinez cautioned that production timelines for a ladder truck or engine can run two to three years or more. Then-Chief Armstrong had estimated a multi-year fleet need of $8 million to $9 million — a figure the union’s new ask now far exceeds.
The warning lands in the middle of the city’s budget crisis. Voters rejected Issue 16, the temporary 0.25 percent income tax levy for neighborhood safety spending, on Nov. 3. The city has since begun notifying about 100 employees that their jobs end Jan. 4, including upwards of 20 firefighters, ToledoBuzz previously reported. The administration submits its proposed 2027 budget to City Council on Monday, Nov. 16, against a roughly $50 million structural deficit.
Whether that budget includes money for new ladder trucks is now one of the biggest open questions in the budget fight.
Sources: The Ohio Flyover (Nov. 13, 2026); Toledo Free Press.
Fire truck with emergency lights on at night — Osman Rana / Unsplash via Wikimedia Commons (CC0). Illustrative photo, not a Toledo rig.
