Click on photo to enlarge

Factory photo of Moravia's 1926 Triple Combination Pumper made by the Sanford Motor Truck Co. in Syracuse, NY.

At roughly $6000, the village's first truck was such a significant investment, a special public vote was called.  Although only 106 people showed up, 86 cast their vote in favor of the proposition.  An order was promptly submitted and the truck was delivered Tuesday, December 28, 1926.  The next day it underwent several tests by the fire department and insurance underwriters.  The pump had a 500 gallons per minute capacity and the truck was equipped with two chemical tanks, several hundred feet of hose, ladders and other apparatus. 

It was because of this truck that the stone watering trough, a fixture in front of Fireman's Hall for years, was moved to East Cayuga street.  This generated a volley of letters and poetic lamentations on the front page of the Republican-Register that lasted several weeks.  In addition, the doors to the fire house needed to be widened and a new concrete floor poured.  Fire Chief Millwood Fitch urged the public to be "very careful about parking on the opposite side of the street" due to the room needed for the truck to make its turn out of the fire house.

One of the truck's first calls was for a mattress fire on Central street on Feb 1, 1927, but the mattress had been thrown out of a window and the fire extinguished before the truck arrived.  Its first heroic performance came the next day when an urgent call came from Locke to assist with a fire at the Mortimer Stryker residence.  The Locke water main was frozen but the Moravia pumper was able to run a hose to the inlet and quickly help extinguish the fire.

Following its retirement, the truck had been parked for a long time in back of the old firehouse on Main street.  It was last seen on Oak Hill, stripped of its equipment.