The shoreline primarily is used to keep the batteries charged not to keep the ambulance warm. If an ambulance is equipped with a block heater that would be an option from the vehicle manufacturer. None of ours have block heaters. All of our ambulances are shoreline equipped but only the CCT units are plugged in. Out of our fleet about 90% of the units are ran daily.
Our ambulances are all Diesel with the exception of our Bariatric units which are AEV boxes on a Chevy frame. Our fleet consists of approximately 80 BLS ambulances. About 50 are Ford type II vans and 25 or so Mercedes Sprinters. The remaining being our Bariatric units. The Mercedes Bluetec diesel engines leave a lot to be desired. They are quiet which is good for us since we do System Status Management and they are decent on economy. Other than that they are crap and I find them completely under powered.
The Fords have tremendous power but they sound like a diesel, which I like but the neighbors don't. Both diesel and gas have their advantages. I personally feel diesel is more appropriate for ambulance service. They are more robust engines, designed for a longer service life and provide more consistent power. I'll take diesel any day.
While I have never done it, several employees have put gas into our diesel ambulances. The Fords can be driven back to HQ, drained and refilled. About a $100 mistake. The Mercedes on the other hand must be towed. If the engine has been started with gas in it parts have to be ordered from Mercedes and replaced in the engine. According to our mechanics it is $10,000 to repair a Mercedes engine that has had gas run through it. We don't have dedicated fuel cards because we don't have our own pumps. We use a card that will activate any pump at any gas station in the country.
AMR tukwila unite!
I was in my regular unit (merc sprinter) doing a day trip over the pass and another crew in a diesel ford doing a similar trip caught us up, we decided to give it the beans, and holy hell that Ford walked away. Sprinters have the worst of both worlds, no low end grunt and all top end power so they have huge turbo lag and are add smooth as falling down a flight of stairs. Avoid sprinter ambulances at all costs, they ride horribly, severely unreliable (major engine and electrical problems starting around 50k miles in every single one in our fleet, for a while my rig was out of service all but two or three days a month) and our old 7.3 Fords are barely starting to cause trouble around 450k miles.
I have done a few shifts in our gasser bariatric rig and hate it in all ways. Clunky, asthmatic, struggles with seattle hills, thirsty, and your have to work it hard to make it move. The diesels feel effortless By comparison, and as such, don't get the nuts revved off of them, which leads to better reliability.
We have a duramax that I have not driven, but one thing I noticed was that it was eerily quiet at idle. Give me diesel any day in any vehicle that weighs over 3 tons. You can just feel when something is just not going to last as long when you drive it how it needs to be driven, and big ass diesels just feel tougher. I'm curious to see how the new little Ford 5 cylinder diesel performs in the transit, but I don't have high hopes.
Diesel vs Gas Ambulances
in Equiqment and Apparatus
Posted
AMR tukwila unite!
I was in my regular unit (merc sprinter) doing a day trip over the pass and another crew in a diesel ford doing a similar trip caught us up, we decided to give it the beans, and holy hell that Ford walked away. Sprinters have the worst of both worlds, no low end grunt and all top end power so they have huge turbo lag and are add smooth as falling down a flight of stairs. Avoid sprinter ambulances at all costs, they ride horribly, severely unreliable (major engine and electrical problems starting around 50k miles in every single one in our fleet, for a while my rig was out of service all but two or three days a month) and our old 7.3 Fords are barely starting to cause trouble around 450k miles.
I have done a few shifts in our gasser bariatric rig and hate it in all ways. Clunky, asthmatic, struggles with seattle hills, thirsty, and your have to work it hard to make it move. The diesels feel effortless By comparison, and as such, don't get the nuts revved off of them, which leads to better reliability.
We have a duramax that I have not driven, but one thing I noticed was that it was eerily quiet at idle. Give me diesel any day in any vehicle that weighs over 3 tons. You can just feel when something is just not going to last as long when you drive it how it needs to be driven, and big ass diesels just feel tougher. I'm curious to see how the new little Ford 5 cylinder diesel performs in the transit, but I don't have high hopes.