This month, the city of Fort Myers became a little bit safer.
"It's pretty surreal, you know? I mean, it's been a long process, but the reward at the end of the tunnel has been awesome," said Wesley Wilkinson, a firefighter with the Fort Myers Fire Department.
After months of hard work and preparation, the Fort Myers Fire Department's tractor-drawn aerial truck, also called a tiller truck, is ready to hit the road.
The way we drive this thing is pretty incredible," said Wilkinson.
Wesley Wilkinson has been with the Fort Myers Fire Department for eight years now. He's an engineer and one of the two people who help operate the truck.
"The other trucks we have aren't able to do some stuff. This truck has two engineers on it or an engineer and a tillerman, so you have two drivers at all times. They're communicating the whole time when you're driving this," he said.
The tiller truck can help firefighters move quickly through tight spaces, especially in downtown Fort Myers. It even has a 107-foot ladder and can store more equipment.
"To be able to have this particular apparatus, to be able to protect our citizens, our residents, our business owners, our visitors is huge," Chief Tracy McMillion told NBC2.
McMillion says the last time the city had a truck like this was 100 years ago, something you would only see up north in cities like New York, Chicago and Seattle. He knows times are changing in Fort Myers.
"Not every other fire department or district would have a need for this, but we do with our historic streets and some of our upward growth of some of our multifamily and also some of our high rises; it's just a need for it," said McMillion.
Now that the department has this blast from the past in its arsenal, it is hoping to use this truck to help save as many lives as possible.
"I'm very excited, so I can't wait to see what kind of calls we can run with testing and type of stuff we can do," said Wilkinson.
"I just love what our crews have done with it, to be prepared for it, to be able to take care of our city," said McMillion.
The Fort Myers Fire Department told NBC2 that it plans on recreating the iconic picture that was captured in January 1926 in front of the historic Bradford building in the heart of downtown Fort Myers.