South Dakota TSM team donates trucks to local fire department

A Basin Electric Transmission System Maintenance (TSM) team in South Dakota recently donated used trucks to a local fire department. It is the second time the team has donated retiring vehicles to a local department.

The 2016 Dodge Ram 5500 pickup was given to the Hitchcock Fire Department in Hitchcock, South Dakota, on Feb. 14, and is being modified by the department to a Type-6 Wildland Brush Truck. Basically, a vehicle used to put out brush and field fires. The cooperative also gave the department a 2012 Ford Ranger.

Logan Rietveld, substation electrician for TSM Huron, said he and other teammates – Tyler Horn, Adam Malsom, and Derrick Freese – came up with the idea of donating retiring vehicles to fire departments instead of going the usual route of auctioning them online at Basin Electric’s Surplus MarketPlace, where surplus equipment is sold. To put the team’s idea into motion, they turned to Basin Electric’s Charitable Giving program for help.

First, they worked with the superintendent of TSM Huron, Nathan Helbing, to get the OK to donate the vehicles. Next, the request was sent to Basin Electric headquarters in Bismarck, North Dakota. Rietveld says Jen Holen, Charitable Giving administrator, and Jeremy Bauer, asset recovery coordinator, were instrumental in making the donation happen.

This wasn’t the first time the TSM team made such a donation. The first truck donation was made in October 2019 to the Wolsey Fire Department in Wolsey, South Dakota. Rietveld says he hopes more vehicles will be donated to local departments in the future.

Rietveld, a volunteer firefighter himself, says he has seen firsthand the needs of small departments and the impact donations such as a used vehicle can have on their crews.

“It’s kind of a grassroots deal,” he says. “Knowing the needs in our area, we felt it was much better to give these trucks to rural fire departments than to sell them online. It’s a huge deal for these departments. It’s huge for the community and huge for the cooperative.”

The donated trucks still have a lot of life left in them, he says, and so the departments can use them for years to come. However, the departments have had to equip the trucks with the proper firefighting tools and in other ways prepare them for their new line of work. 

“The Wolsey truck has been finished and was put into service earlier this year. I have seen it on a few calls, and it is performing better than expected,” Rietveld says. “The Hitchcock truck is still in the build phase, and they plan on having it done and in service before the start of summer.”

Before donating the trucks to the Hitchcock department, the TSM team personalized one of them by putting the nickname of a firefighter, Darwin Walter, who died the previous year on the side of the vehicle. “In Memory of Derb,” the writing says. Walter worked for the department for more than 40 years and “was a real staple in their department,” Rietveld says.

Rietveld says he and the team can see the donation process spreading to other states. “It’s something we would like to continue to do, and it doesn’t have to be limited to South Dakota,” he says. “There are plenty of departments across Basin Electric’s service territory. There are fire departments all over the country.”

The Basin Electric way, Rietveld says, is to help communities. This is a good way to do that. It gets teams involved with something positive outside of work and allows others to see the cooperative is about more than only providing power; it’s about giving back, stepping up, and helping others.

“We would like to continue this trend if TSM management will let us and if Basin Electric’s Charitable Giving still sees a need,” Rietveld says. “There are multiple small volunteer fire departments in our service area that would be thrilled to receive a piece of equipment like this. In my opinion, it is worth more to Basin Electric to donate this equipment to an organization that gives so much to their communities, such as a fire department, than to sell it on Surplus MarketPlace for pennies on the dollar.”