With its 1,500-gallon water tank removed, the only thing Kevin Mullan’s working 1987 E-One pumper fire engine puts out now is thirst.
But Kevin Mullan has no intention of fighting fires with his investment. Instead he bought the engine, retrofitted it with 10 taps and a climb-in cooler, and christened it Ladder 419 Beer Truck.
“There was not a rentable [beer] truck in town,” Mr. Mullan said, “but there is now. Oh, and by the way, it happens to be a fire truck.”
While the fire engine’s original look has been retained, almost anything to do with its original mission of extinguishing flames is merely cosmetic, including levers, gauges, and valves.
The climb-in cooler holds 10 kegs of beer or soda, and for $450, local party throwers can reserve the former emergency vehicle for a four-hour block of time.
Ladder 419 Beer Truck will undoubtedly create a stir as it motors up to homes for private events (birthday, weddings, graduation, block parties) as well as to festivals and other public events.
But it also serves a functional purpose for those in the area who brew craft beers and have no practical way to serve their homemade brews to the masses at public events — unlike, say, Coors and Budweiser, which have their own tap trucks.
“The small guys could all come together” and rent the engine, he said, “to serve at major festivals and events.”
Mr. Mullan, 38, who recently joined Thread Marketing Group as vice president of business development, said the idea of a mobile beer truck in Toledo actually came to him years ago while he lived in Dallas.
“I saw an antique fire truck with a wood-fired pizza oven and a couple of beer taps and I thought, ‘There’s something here.’ “
Mr. Mullan said his wife agreed with his entrepreneurial plan, a phenomenon that doesn’t happen often considering what he described as his “history of bad business ideas.”
“This is one my wife really liked, though, so we jumped on it” when they returned home to Toledo in 2014.
They researched and considered retrofitting other vehicles (school bus, motor home). They missed out on a couple of near-deal online auctions for other fire engines. Finally, Mr. Mullan saw his future beer-mobile on Facebook Marketplace in late March.
The ad was placed by a farmer in, appropriately enough, Coldwater, Mich., a nearly two-hour drive (mostly west and a bit north) from Toledo. The farmer bought the fire engine with the intention of watering his fields, but the 35-foot vehicle was too heavy, so he opted to unload it right away.
Mr. Mullan found the ad on a Wednesday, contacted the farmer about buying the engine on Thursday, secured a bank loan on Friday, and picked up the engine on Saturday.
He was surprised by what he found: a fire engine in good condition — it was used to put out a fire in nearby Leonidas, Mich., only two months before the farmer bought it — for a price that, as he put it, “is less than people think.”
Only days after the fire engine arrived in Toledo, Mr. Mullan’s true labor and financial investment began, including prep work and an overall inspection, removing the water tank — its metal top now serves as the floor to the cooler — building and installing the cabinets and the equipment for the kegs, and commencing custom-designed graphics like the Ladder 419 logo on the engine’s doors. The process isn’t over, he said, but it’s close.
Meanwhile, his Ladder 419 Beer Truck had its soft launch last month at his 38th birthday, and on June 28, it will make its first public appearance at the Bring Back the ‘80s and ‘90s event in downtown Blissfield, Mich., showcasing craft beers from Tecumseh Brewing Co. and Black Fire Winery from nearby Tecumseh, Mich.
Heather Marks, interim director of Blissfield’s Downtown Development Authority who has been working on the event, said she heard about Mr. Mullan’s tap truck through a friend.
“I thought that would be [an] awesome” addition to the party, she said, “so I contacted him just to get the ball rolling and to see if it was available for the date.
“It’s definitely not something you would expect someone to be doing with a fire truck,” Ms. Marks added. “It’s something unique that people have never seen before. They might just stop by to see it operate and how it works. And, of course, there’s the beer itself.”
Mr. Mullan said it’s too late for him to partner with most of the events and festivals on this summer’s calendar, but he’s already in talks with those organizers about next year.
For those who would like more information, visit Tapped419.com.
Just don’t call 911.
The Ladder 419 Beer Truck, as Mr. Mullan said, is for “a different kind of emergency.”
First Published June 20, 2019, 12:00 p.m.
