Thirteen months after a lost wheel grounded the Wiscasset Fire Department’s ladder truck during a training exercise, the vehicle is once again road-ready.

Fire Chief T.J. Merry told the Wiscasset Newspaper Friday afternoon, Ladder 1 has been road-tested and is back in service. The department used it in a training exercise June 29.

Merry said the repairs came to nearly $18,000, about $8,000 more than budgeted for maintenance on all of the fire trucks in the 2015-16 budget. The fiscal year ended June 30.

Because of the vehicle’s age and the fact this model of fire truck is no longer manufactured, the mechanic doing the repairs had to scour the country to get parts needed for the repairs.

“It was a struggle but the company we hired finally located the parts they needed,” added Merry.

Reliance Fire Pump & Aerial Ladder of Vassalboro, a company that specializes in fire truck maintenance and repair, did the work.

Repairing the truck cost a fraction of what it would take to replace the vehicle. Merry said a new pumper truck with a comparable 75-foot rotating extension ladder would cost between $750,000 and $1 million.

“The life expectancy of a fire truck is between 20 to 25 years. Our ladder truck is 27 years old,” he said. Mechanically, the truck is still in good running order.

The truck went out of service on the evening of June 10, 2015. The truck was en route back to the station when, without warning, a wheel on the passenger side sheared off the rear axle.

One of the duel wheels bounded to the opposite side of the road and careened into a parked car, smashing out its rear window, then striking a utility pole, which caused an hour-long power outage.

No one was injured in the accident on Gardiner Road near Little Village Bistro.

Merry said since the accident, the department has initiated changes in the way the wheels are secured.

Ladder 1 is a 1989 Thibault model manufactured by Carl Thibault, the oldest manufacturer of emergency vehicles in Canada.  At the 1989 annual town meeting, voters raised $315,000 to purchase it. It’s powered by a 475 horsepower Detroit diesel engine with an automatic transmission. It’s equipped with a rotating, retractable ladder and has a pumping capacity of 1,250 gallons of water per minute.