Pause in rollout of new trucks after cracked chassis issues in fleet pivotal to FENZ challenges

Thursday, 14 May 2026

Fire and Emergency NZ has told a select committee it will be $154 million short on the funding needed to bring its ageing fleet into line over the next 10 years as its faces pressure from its workforce and the public to invest heavily in the equipment.

Staff told the governance and administration committee on Wednesday it would cost about $510m to bring the fleet into its target age, but financial projections found the organisation could fund only $356m of that.

FENZ chief executive Kerry Gregory, who was joined by board chairwoman Rebecca Keoghan, chief financial officer Darryl Purdy and deputy chief executive operational response Megan Stiffler, fronted the panel after being asked to return from a previous session.

During that meeting, Ōtaki MP Tim Costley found answers he was given about why type 3 appliances purchased several years earlier were not on the road “intentionally misleading”.

Gregory and the others accepted there had been some “confusion” created, but denied there had been any intention to purposely mislead anyone.

He said the organisation had ordered 30 type 3 trucks in August 2019, but a month later 27 of 47 trucks ordered between 2015 and 2018 were found to have cracked chassis.

They made the operational decision to pause the production of the 30 trucks until a solution was found for the cracking, and he said this was pivotal in realising why they were now facing these challenges.

It had taken longer than anticipated as FENZ worked with the suppliers, and in December 2023 it asked Angloco to build 28 of the type 3 appliances acquired in 2019.

Two were used as prototypes, and Gregory said these were destined to be sent to New Plymouth and Rotorua once operational.

The plan was to have 16 trucks on the road by July but this was not yet confirmed, and the remaining 12 were still to be built. FENZ had not yet taken ownership of these.

Gregory and the others were scrutinised for their answers, particularly by Costley who asked Keoghan what the board was doing to proactively address these issues.

She said they had expressed their concern about the last select committee and the “confusion” figures provided had created, but she also stressed they had sent staff to that meeting who they thought had the right information.

In hindsight, she agreed with Costley that was not the case but disagreed when he said the perception was that they had thrown those people “under the bus”.

Stiffler said she understood the frustration firefighters felt about the fleet issues, which included 98 appliances unable to get to a callout in 2025, but their turnout rate was still at 99.72%.

FENZ had 1267 appliances across the country, and she said these worked within a network, so if one truck broke down there was always another available.

Green Party MP Mike Davidson asked how they got this information as a request he had made for numbers relating to these breakdowns was declined.

Gregory said this was due to the “teams of people” pulling together information needed for the inquiry, and although he could not provide the amount spent on consultants, he added there was a plan in place to address fleet issues within the budget they had.

According to Purdy, FENZ allocated 20% of its total spend to its fleet, while it spent 40% on property, 20% on equipment and 20% on ICT systems that needed to be “progressively” replaced.