STANLEY -- Mayor Rodger Sill pulls his lanky frame up into the truck's cab and slowly drives the rumbling red diesel out of the fire department garage. Hopping down, he strides around the station, showing off the city's equipment.

Stanley's annual fire department budget is barely $12,000, but sitting in the garage is about $3 million worth of supplies acquired for free through a national military surplus program.

"It's like -- wow!" Sill says.

Congress established the Federal Excess Personal Property program more than 50 years ago. It allows rural fire departments to claim government equipment no longer in use.

Karl Harris, a state forestry employee who helps coordinate Iowa's involvement, said dozens of Northeast Iowa communities find uses for the discarded equipment, which would otherwise be auctioned to the public. Stanley has accumulated the biggest benefit in the state.

The firetruck Sill demonstrated was formerly a military dump truck. When an air guard unit based in St. Paul, Minn., acquired another, it sent the vehicle to surplus with slightly more than 20,000 miles on it. Besides filing paperwork, the city just needed to drive it home.

"It wasn't pretty," Sills said. "We've got some sweat in it, but hardly any money."

Stanley has also scavenged water tanks, hoses, handheld radios, diesel generators and other equipment let go by the Army, Navy and Air Force. The mayor even snagged a never-assembled hoop building -- $40,000 worth of steel beams and sheet metal -- sitting at a Navy surplus site in Chicago. Once built, the 3,600-square-foot structure will serve as the city's new fire station.

Other cities that take advantage of the program include Hudson, Waverly, Fairbank, Independence and Grundy Center. Harris said Iowa inventories about $15 million worth of equipment around the state.

Stanley, a city with only about 125 residents, has an advantage from Sill's two decades of Army and National Guard service. Equipment is listed on a government Web site, but often coded in military abbreviations and inventory numbers, Sill said.

"You've got strange names for stuff," Sill said. "It takes a little inside knowledge … It's just an unbelievable amount of stuff out there."

To help fire departments navigate the system, the state has two employees in the forestry bureau, part of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Sill is also lobbying state legislators to invest more money in promoting and explaining the program to local governments.

"It's a huge payback," Sills said. "It's hardly something you can afford to ignore, but we're close to doing that in Iowa."

The equipment must serve a purpose in wildfire protection. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service acquires the items and then loans them to state foresters, which then extends the offer to local departments. A parallel program provides excess equipment to police and sheriffs departments.

Harris, who trolls government databases and equipment lists looking for items of interest to the state's fire departments, said the supply is smaller lately because the military is so active. But finds are still out there.

Sills was most shocked at discovering a new portable cascade unit still in its factory case. The machine allows firefighter to refill air tanks in the field rather than returning to a station. It was one of 12 sitting at a Rock Island base.

"I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the Pentagon was buying new at the same time they were surplusing them," Sills said.

Contact Dan Haugen at (319) 291-1565 or dan.haugen@wcfcourier.com.