The Kewanee Fire Department welcomed its newest addition to the vehicle fleet on Monday, October 6, 2025. The 2025 fire truck from Alexis Fire Equipment Company comes equipped with a Spartan engine, holds 1,000 gallons of water, pumps 1,500 gallons of water per minute, and has storage for ladders and additional storage at the top of the rig. The truck is about four feet longer than the 2017 engine and will provide twice the storage. The fire truck cost $742,456, and over $690,000 was paid for by a federal grant. The 1991 engine will be sold to help cover the city’s portion of the cost. The new truck will become the lead engine, the 2017 engine will go to backup, and the 1994 engine will be a reserve engine. Fire department personnel will be trained on the controls in the new engine over the next couple of days, and then the new engine heads to Peoria to be one of the spotlight vehicles at the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association’s annual conference, and returns home on October 16, 2025, and will likely go into service immediately. Chief Welgat said they went with an engine that is almost identical to the current engines to provide continuity for fire department personnel.
The new engine weighs about 12 tons and took two years to get. In comparison, before COVID, the 2017 engine took six months to get and cost around $350,000.
Driven by the Kewanee Fire Chief, Stephen Welgat, and pushed by members of the Kewanee Fire Department and City Manager Gary Bradley, the brand-new fire truck was pushed into its new home bay. This tradition dates back to the days when horses pulled fire trucks, and the truck had to be manually pushed into the truck bay because horses couldn’t walk backwards.
