Todays update!
I’ll call this one “The Magic Mini-Bus”.
So I was talking to Gary about this latest ambulance delivery and the fact that we just crowd-funded another L200 for $5000. We both then devolved into a mutual gripe session about the prices of these 4x4’s on the continent and how we can buy them all day long in the UK (I didn’t mention it while we were shopping, but I had a line on a $1600 L200 in Scotland that got snatched up before I could make my move).
The thing is, the taxes kill 4x4 owners in the UK, and no one off the island wants a LHD vehicle. This means there’s exactly ZERO market for these things unless you absolutely need one to work from. And numbers are the big game for Gary.
With drone strikes, and mechanical failures, and just everything in-between. Gary could have two L200’s from Scotland (even with the cost of transport) for the price of one L200 from the continent. And we decided we needed to work together to figure out how we’re going to make this happen.
Hanging up, and completely on a whim, I wrote the guy who sold us the ambulance. My message can easily be distilled down to “hey, buddy. Any chance you got someone who wants to donate a vehicle but doesn’t want to cross into Ukraine?”
And his response was basically “are you being serious right now?”
I told him how P4U has drivers that only drive as far as the Polish border, and then turn around. I may have embellished a bit and may have exaggerated the facts slightly, but his response was “hmmm. I’ll ask”.
Now, in our conversation it was known that we were looking for a 4x4 of some sort. So I was surprised when his reply was “well, would a 20-passenger mini-bus be of any use to you?”
My initial reply was to laugh, but I asked Gary anyway. Gary did not hold back, and for a minute I thought I told the joke of the century and almost felt bad. That lasted until Gary caught his breath and said “switch to video, mate. Can you see this?”
On both monitors in Gary’s office, he was shopping for mini-busses in Scotland.
NO berkeleyING WAY!!!!
“Yeah man, we use these for light medical evacs. People with broken bones and whatnot but don’t need ambulances. We fill them up because we can take the equipment in them too, and run them back to the cities.”
“Also for ‘green-light’ runs like in Bahkmut when they opened the evacuation corridor to get the civilians out. They let us medics in because we can go unarmed, and these minivans literally have their wheels driven off”
“We’ve been without for a year, mate. Our last one was literally used until it couldn’t possibly be used anymore. It was so bad, we couldn’t even scrap it when it was done. That’s how much these things get driven”
I relayed the message to the man offering. And I gotta be clear, this is a “no promises” agreement, but he is asking for a request from the command and Gary is on it. He’s joking now that we’re going to be responsible for replenishing his whole fleet.
I honest to goodness don’t know how we’re going to pull this off, but we now have a “solid maybe” on a 20-passenger mini-bus to fill a year-long vacancy at the battalion. It’s in the UK, and that’s a long way from our driveway.
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