Robbinsdale Fire Department Gets Back City’s Second Fire Engine

Robbinsdale’s second-most historic fire engine went to summer camp Up North for nearly 50 years and came back pretty much unchanged.

“We kind of always heard it was up there, and we didn’t know where,” said Capt. Tom Robertus with Robbinsdale Fire Department. He said the camp near Isabella, MN closed a couple of years ago, and it had purchased the 1935 International fire engine from the city in an auction in 1978. “We’re glad they reached out to us and still had the truck and kept it in good condition for us, so we worked out a deal and went up and looked at it and it was in surprisingly good condition for as old as it is and it’s been sitting up there for 48 years.”

Robbinsdale Fire Department Engine #2

Members of the department brought it back to Robbinsdale late in 2025 and rehabbed the truck over the winter, which wasn’t nearly as much work as Robertus and others thought it would be.

“We rebuilt all the brakes on it, fixed a few leaks, rebuilt the whole cooling system–new radiator, new water pump, there was no exhaust system on it, so we put a new exhaust system on it,” said Robertus.

Members of the department drove Engine #2 earlier in July in the city’s Whiz Bang Days parade, along with other pieces of apparatus and the historic Engine #1, from 1926. Both historic engines will also be available for rides at the Public Safety Open House on Saturday, August 8.

“There’s a lot of departments that wish they still had their original fire trucks and part of history, and they’ve long since been part of history and scrapped and down the road, so to get 1 and 2 back in the city is a very great opportunity for us,” said Robertus.

“It’s history. I love Robbinsdale, and I love Robbinsdale Fire. It’s great to move forward into the future, but if you forget about where we came from in the past, we’ll kind of just lose what we are, we’ll end up just like the other departments around here that are newer,” said Firefighter Aric Gobernatz, who also helped in the restoration work on Engine #2.  “We take a lot of pride in our heritage here.”

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