BROADALBIN — The Broadalbin-Kenyetto Volunteer Fire Department’s 1934 pumper truck has returned home.

Several members of the department are restoring the classic Chevrolet-Sanford after the department reacquired it last summer from the Perth Volunteer Fire Department.

Broadalbin Historian Gordon Cornell said Tuesday that no contract dollars, or taxpayer dollars, have been used to purchase the old pumper or pay for parts for the restoration, and the volunteer firefighters doing the work aren’t charging for labor.

The department was able to secure the pumper for $5,000 and has spent hundreds more in donated funds for parts, Cornell said.

“We had to do the mechanical stuff first,” he said, the brakes, the fuel system and the like. The pumper’s worn old paint will be resurfaced as donations allow, he said.

“It’s a start. We have been doing things under the truck and under the hood.”

Back in 1934 the department spent $645 for the chassis and $2,139 for the pumper body. Cornell said a new truck costs 100 times that today.

“A little sign of the changes in specifications and inflation,” he said.

After being delivered in May 1934, the truck was in service in Broadalbin until 1950 when it was replaced with a Ford-American pumper.

It was sold to the Rural Grove Volunteer Fire Department in Montgomery County and was passed to private hands at some point, Cornell said. It is believed to have eventually been bequeathed to the department in Perth.

Cornell said it’s not unusual for fire departments to restore antique apparatus. What is unusual is that it’s their original equipment.

“The unique thing to us is this is our old truck. There aren’t too many of them that have their own trucks,” he said.

Plans are to show off the truck in the Memorial Day parade, set for 9:30 a.m. Monday. Cornell said since much of the work has been mechanical it won’t look like new. But he said officials hope that showing off the truck will spark interest and donations.

“We’re hoping this will help people see what we’re doing,” he said.