{"id":134595,"date":"2026-03-10T16:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/134595\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T16:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:38:10","slug":"readings-first-motorized-fire-truck-returned-to-first-home-berks-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/134595\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading\u2019s first motorized fire truck returned to first home | Berks Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa \u2014 \u200bHistory comes home.<\/p>\n

\u201cReading had probably the largest volunteer fire company in the country \u2014 10,000 members during its height,\u201d said Richard Boyer, a retired city fire chief.<\/p>\n

From manpower to horsepower.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe early apparatus were pulled by the firemen,\u201d Boyer said. \u201cAs they got heavier, naturally, you had to add horses.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are many significant signs of the passage of time and history for the Reading Fire Department and the Reading Area Firefighters Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c1771, that is five years before the Declaration of Independence,\u201d Boyer said.<\/p>\n

But now, across decades, many miles, and a Sotheby’s auction<\/a> near Miami…<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re still shocked that we were able to do that, but it’s coming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u201d is Berks County\u2019s first first motorized fire truck \u2014 a 1911 American LaFrance Type 5 Double Tank Combination fire engine.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can feel the emotion,\u201d Boyer said.<\/p>\n

\"1911<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

By way of a flatbed truck from the American LaFrance Corporate Collection in south Florida, the engine is once again back home at the former Liberty Fire Company\u2019s station at South Fifth and Laurel streets, where the museum is now located.<\/p>\n

It may be tired from the long journey, but it’s looking like a beaut nonetheless.<\/p>\n

“Once you get to be a hundred and some years old, you don’t do too much running anymore,” he said.<\/p>\n

How do museum leaders surmise they got the winning bid? History buffs with heart, they said.<\/p>\n

“We just had a feeling that a lot of the bidders knew where it should go and didn’t try to outbid us,” Boyer explained.<\/p>\n

History, heart and a return home for the first engine that did.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really started to think in detail about history,\u201d Boyer added. \u201cWe’re still uncovering things all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum created a GoFundMe page<\/a> to collection donations for covering the cost of buying the fire truck and transporting it back to Reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa \u2014 \u200bHistory comes home. \u201cReading had probably the largest volunteer fire company in the country \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5330,736,61855,128,130,129,6426,61856],"class_list":["post-134595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-firefighting","tag-reading","tag-reading-area-firefighters-museum","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-fire-department","tag-richard-boyer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}