Page 402 - NIXBOOK

“Waaaait a minute!” I hear you saying. “I thought you guys got new cars every 7 years or so! Why did you get stuck with a car
that was 10 years old?!?” Well that’s a good point, I’m glad to see you’re paying attention here. Yes, our police cars were good
for about 7 or 8 years and then they’d get retired. But later on my career, as we got past 2010, the consequences of having frugal
bosses (mayors and council members who controlled our budget) had caught up with us in a bad way; we were needing 3 or 4
new replacement vehicles each year but we were getting only one or maybe two. The PPD had about a dozen patrol cars, 3
sergeant cars, two more for the chief and deputy chief and 2 more for the detectives - plus a couple spares kept in strategic
reserve to fill in when a regular car broke down or needed service – totaling almost two dozen cars.

So the replacement rate started falling behind and our cars were being kept for 9, 10, 11, and 12 years. Which is really pushing it
for a car that gets driven almost daily, and sometimes driven hard in a LOT of stop and go traffic and a lot of engine turning on
and off and on and off and on and off. The Explorer I got was definitely past its prime and a step backward. I was actually the
5th officer it had been assigned to. Right after I got it the transmission pretty much blew up; I took it to a repair shop in town
and told the mechanic “I have this old Explorer,” and before I could even finish he grinned and said “Lemme guess – it’s not
shifting in third gear.” I confirmed it and he consoled me with “It happens to all of them! It’s going to take me 19 hours of labor
to get it apart, I can put in a refurb tranny, warranty for two years, total price will be a little under thirty eight hundred dollars.”
The Explorer was not even worth half that but we had no choice but to go ahead and authorize the repair. That was the third
Explorer we had that needed either the transmission or the engine replaced. I suspected that the mayor and city council, when
presented with another repair bill for $3,800 dollars, probably said “What! How much? Wait, the refurbished transmission is
guaranteed for two years? So….that patrol vehicle is good for another two years now? We don’t need to replace it with a new car
now? Hey! Good job Officer Hoke! Thank you!”