Meanwhile Private Equity Is Taking Over the Fire Truck Industry
They create artificial bottleneck to cause shortages, price hikes.
This is what happens when public services become a soulless greedy psychopath’s playtoy. Doesn’t matter how many bodies pile up. All that matters is meeting numbers or writing off losses. This behavior is anti-life.
Private equity needs to be removed from everything that adversely affects the public.
I’m a retired fire Chief and I can tell you this actually began almost 20 years ago in which I dealt with this direct through the legal system and literally sat corporations back in their chairs. I have worked both local state and federal government agencies as well as for the department of Homeland and have been a consultant for the past decade in both private and public sectors. Not meaning to step on anybody’s toes, fire Chiefs literally sat on their desks and watched this happen….and until they couldn’t get parts, then they complained. There is an old saying in crisis management, if you have to wait for the event to occur to ask what am I supposed to do it’s too damn late. This is what happened and this is where we are at.
Private equity does nothing good, they bought Joann’s Fabric and repackaged it with the debt from the buyout and resold it. Effectively they did worse than nothing and bankrupted the company and walked away with all the money from the loan but the loan was still tied to Joann’s instead of the private equity firm.
As long as we let people hide behind corporations without repercussions, this type of thing will continue to happen. Just wait until water eventually gets privatized…
Private equity is currently cannibalizing Walgreens after a single CEO destroyed $90 billion of its worth from 2015 to 2025. Private equity picks at weak prey.
Private Equity is Capitalism Gone Wild
As a previous City fleet mechanic, I have seen this first hand. We had firetrucks that were nearly 2 years behind service and would come in with 30 plus known problems needing adressing. Trucks were behind on mandatory safety inspections and tests. Parts were overcomplicated and proprietary for a reason. Schematics were non existent even for newer trucks and with the amount of electrical system on these it made diagnosis a nightmare that no tech wanted to deal with. The mechanic shortage really plays a big part in this story as well because it was extremely difficult to find someone willing to work on solely firetrucks. Their was very little pay incentive with double the workload and stress. Stations were breathing down our neck and being nit picky about finish work instead of more vital systems operations. Firetrucks are a godsend to the public and a nightmare for the city.
