Mayor Tim Mahoney is proposing the potentially cost-saving measure after learning about trends in other cities at a recent conference.

"Is there a way of doing some of our runs with a little less manpower, in a sense, and the manpower being the fire trucks?" he said in a recent interview, sitting alongside Fire Chief Steve Dirksen.

Mahoney has tasked Dirksen with creating a pilot program, to be run out of the downtown station, to see whether using pickups can make the department more efficient.

This move comes after a record number of fire department calls last year. Fargo firefighters had 10,711 calls for service in 2017, rising steadily from 6,262 just five years earlier.

The bulk of the 2017 calls — more than 6,400 — were emergency medical calls in which the firefighters' skills, not necessarily a fire engine, were needed.