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[Music]
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there's no
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room for we can't fix a fire truck it
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can't happen
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you have to fix it there's no backing
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down from at all we'll get to it later
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no
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you have to be there you have to get
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this done now no matter what this
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truck's got to go
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[Music]
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my name is rodney lee
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my title is heavy duty technician
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for the city of charlotte here
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maintaining fire trucks for the city of
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charlotte
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[Music]
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we have to go out and do panic stops to
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make sure nothing's
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uh when you hit the brakes like that the
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steering wheel ain't trying to jerk out
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of your hand or it's actually coming to
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a smooth stop in that panic stop right
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now
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[Music]
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a typical day of work is
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trucks constantly breaking the city is
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growing and it's growing fast these fire
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trucks are breaking they're breaking
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fast because they have the response
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and there's a lot of
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behind the scenes a lot of people don't
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know about it it takes a lot to run one
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of these five
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there's probably 120 fire trucks
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equipment wise there's probably up to uh
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seven 800 pieces of equipment that we
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have to maintain yearly and each truck
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has to come in at least twice a year
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my family loves what i do
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my grandkids my wife they all think it's
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special and what i do and it is special
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i've always seen fire truck as every
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little kid does a lot of kids they love
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fire trucks they love them and
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it makes me excited that sometimes we
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leave out here we have to test drive
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them and my youngest girl i used to do
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that to her and uh
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and she sit in the back of truck and we
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rolled around the parking lot and she
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was just laughing like to no end
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so now she's actually a charlotte
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firefighter causing me
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she just became a charlotte firefighter
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i look at each one of the firefighters
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as my kid
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if one of those get hurt and it's due to
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something i've done i feel just as
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responsible as anyone else every life is
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very important to me that gets in that
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truck
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and that's the way all the guys that i
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work with feel
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again it takes a special person to be a
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firefighter technician
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you can ask any of them anything you
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want to they're going to give you the
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same answer
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we're we're we're sort of weird but we
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love our job and we do our job well the
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firemen's that drive these trucks
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are just as important but
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it takes us for them to be them who they
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are so
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that's the bottom line