Terry, Joe, Richard and James (Inside a Cohesive Fire Truck Company and Brotherhood) - Episode 162

Behind The Shield

James Geering

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Fitness

4.9 • 667 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2025

⏱️ 229 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Terry, Joe and Dickie were my crew on Truck 1 in California, a true example of a band of brothers. We've helped each other through epic fires, gruesome extrications, divorce, back surgery, COVID and PTSD.

This episode gives an insight into the reality of a cohesive team. in the fire service. We discussed everything from creating great leadership, dealing with trauma, the importance of training and much more.

Terry Wilson, Joe Aldecoa, Richard (Dickie) Sprout and James Geering served on a Truck Company in California together. This was by far the most cohesive crew I was assigned to. We bought some beer, turned on the microphones and just started talking. This gives the listener an insight of a band of brothers who saw the best and worst life had to offer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. My name's James Gearing and this is episode 162 and happy new year to you all.
0:07.4	This week I bring to you an episode that I want to do for a long time now, which is with my old truck crew when I was out west in California, who I consider the most cohesive crew I worked on.
0:19.7	We worked together for several years on the same truck,
0:22.6	every single shift. These same men years, years later came over and stood next to me when I married Becky.
0:29.6	So we've been through some horrendous calls, we've been through some incredible, you know, fires,
0:35.6	you know, the highs and the lows, as it were.
0:38.9	And so I decided to sit us all down. We got some beers, put up the microphones, and basically
0:45.1	just let it run for what ended up being a four-hour conversation. This is obviously the four
0:52.2	of us discussing things. So these are, you know are opinions, but I wanted to give an insight into a cohesive crew and what that looks like and what that sounds like.
1:04.0	So Terry, our truck captain, who is, I guess, Scottish American, you could say uh joe is mexican american or engineer um dicky
1:14.7	my partner is white south african and obviously i'm british so you have this international crew
1:20.6	you have this bar set very high um and you know there's this banter you're going to hear this
1:27.4	back and forth and you know the the's this banter. You're going to hear this back and forth.
1:28.5	And, you know, the way that we talk about the firefighters that we admire and the way that we're going to discuss about people that come into the profession who aren't there to do good.
1:38.1	They're out there to just, you know, collect a paycheck.
1:40.6	So all these are discussed.
1:43.5	But there's such a facade on the fire service
1:47.7	in one respect where we're almost expected to be like choir boys. And that's complete bullshit,
1:54.8	basically. If you're going to ask men and women to go out there and do the things that we do,
1:59.0	the reality is we decompressed by this,
2:01.9	this, this, this humor and, you know, we have low tolerance of people that aren't in this
2:06.4	profession to, to go out there and hold themselves to the highest level. So you're going to hear
	...

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