Mt. Pleasant City Streets
After its service with the Fire Department ended in 1915 when the City purchased its first motorized fire truck, the horse-drawn wagon once used to haul hose to fires was converted into a street sweeper and given a second life maintaining the City's streets.
In keeping with the times, on October 26, 1915 Mt. Pleasant purchased its first motorized fire truck, a 1915 Brockway that did not have a pump or water tank. The shiny new Brockway replaced the horse-drawn wagon used for several years to haul hose to the scene of a fire, but the trusty ole hose wagon still hadn't seen its better days. Ingenious City employees converted the former hose wagon into a street sweeper, and it continued to serve the City in a useful capacity. This wasn't the only time a Fire Department hand-me-down was put to use by the Street Department. Twenty-one years later the Brockway reached the end of its fire-fighting life and was moved to the City warehouse. When the City began its 1938 street oiling program, City Engineer Tom Grissom resurrected the old Brockway chassis and added a tank with a pump that pumped a thousand gallons of oil into the tank in two and a half minutes. The pump and tank could also be used for fires where no plugs were available.
