A decommissioned PL Custom ambulance used by the Manasquan First Aid Squad was recently donated to a small town in North Carolina that was severely damaged as a result of rain, flooding and mudslides caused by Hurricane Helene in September 2024. 

The 2008 Ambulance has served the city of Manasquan well for the last 17 years, but it still has a lot of life left in it. Rich Hingston, David Egan and Jerry Brown, all veteran members of the Manasquan First Aid Squad, made the 616-mile journey from Manasquan to Linville, North Carolina to donate a PL Custom Medallion model 2008 ambulance to the Linville-Central Rescue Squad, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains just outside Asheville in Avery County. 

“As our equipment gets older, it’s nice to do something to make sure that the equipment gets put to good use,” Egan said. “It was the members’ decision that they could use it down there and they really could get some use out of it, so it worked out really well.”

Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountain range, the Linville-Central Rescue Squad is a private, all-volunteer rescue squad that serves the people of Avery County. The squad’s first responders, emergency medical technicians, rescue technicians and paramedics respond to motor vehicle and work-related accidents, traumatic injuries and medical emergencies, wilderness and mountain rescues, searches for lost or missing persons, water-related rescues and calls to assist county and fire departments, according to the rescue squad website.

The lasting devastation from Hurricane Helene that is still evident months after the storm: “There were homes that were wiped out. What was really disturbing about that was people had tents set up, where people were living out of tents. It’s a very rough situation still down there I’m not saying they feel forgotten but it’s going to be a long recovery period for them and hopefully they get the resources to rebuild.” Brown says.

At PL Custom, we are proud to manufacture these life-saving vehicles that not only benefit our community, but communities all over the country. We are dedicated to quality and are overjoyed to hear that the 2008 model vehicle is still running strong today, more than 16 years later. We approach the construction of every vehicle with the attention to detail necessary to assure it is durable and able to persist the challenges of the EMS profession.

Excerpts quoted from: https://starnewsgroup.com/2025/01/23/squan-first-aid-squad-donates-ambulance/