The real problem with fire equipment is that it will sit there in an emergency unless you have the staff on hand to operate it. Small, remote, or cheap towns get to burn while they wait for volunteer #2 to make it to the station.
My uncle used to be in charge of the fire services in a mostly rural, sparsely populated county in a Western state. They bought their equipment used from well-funded dense suburban departments, generally in New York or New Jersey where equipment was in almost constant use and replaced often to ensure high availability. Once in a more rural area where some equipment might go a month or more between uses, such equipment was perfectly fine. They would keep them around for 3-5 years and then sell to a fire district in an even more rural area.
So there's always equipment. Just not always someone to operate it. Especially when you'd have to pay decent wages for a crew to sit around and do nothing for days or weeks at a time, these places instead either have volunteers or part-time employees that only come to the station when called.