I was pleasantly surprised when I began assembling this truck at how fairly simple it was assemble. It took me a while, around an hour and a half, but everything fit, the instructions were clear, and I even managed to avoid any roof blowing temper tantrums.

The truck looks like it will last a while and I only have two minor issues.

The placement of the ladders around the cockpit where the child sits makes it awkward for little legs and bodies to get in and out. True, the ladders do come off very easy and they can be put on again in one second, but little hands and legs have a way of tripping over themselves and bringing home scrapes and bruises.

I think they need to re-engineer the pedals and the pedal travel on the truck. The pedal movement travels in an almost a completely horizontal path. More like two legs pumping rather than pedaling. Further, one complete pedal cycle only moves the truck about a foot. Not the most efficient mode of travel.

Still, my son loves it.

So I bought this for my nephew for his 1st birthday and had it sent to his house. My Sister called and said it was really cool and pretty heavy duty but they didn't send the screws to attach the ladders and some of the pieces didn't line up well. She said it was nice and heavy duty but lacked a little quality in craftsmanship. If they spent a little more time with attention to detail during production, this would be a 5 star item. Kind of a bummer for the amount of money. Oh well.

I bought this for my grandson's 3rd birthday. He likes it a lot. He's crazy about firemen. So he enjoys the truck very much.
I wish the ladders were stationary. He took them off and after putting them back on many times, we gave up and they just lay in the toy room.
But the truck was all that I thought it would be and I would recomend it to anyone.
We're also purchasing a siren separatly. Cause what's the sense in going to a fire if you don't use your siren.

We bought this pedal car for our grandson this past Christmas. We put it together and suprisingly, it wasn't that difficult. We weren't able to wrap it so we sat it in front of the tree among the other gifts and he went straight for it. He climbed right in and has had many, many hours of fun ever since. This thing is made so well. It is a lot more durable than we expected. It has risen above all of his other ride on toys to become his favorite. It has a lot of nice features too. Like the removable ladders and the bell. You can also adjust the reach of the pedals as they grow. Considering how well it's made, i'm quite certain it will be an heirloom for his grandchildren some day.

My 2 1/2 year old nephew received this for Christmas and was very excited. However, two hours later when his dad, grandpa, and uncle (all highly skilled engineer-types) were still working on sorting out the nuts, bolts, and how to fix the bent axle so that the pedals would actually turn, he was sitting staring sadly with his head on the steering wheel saying, "But it's my truck . . ."

Grandpa commented that they sure hadn't changed how they make pedal trucks from the 1940s when his best friend got one. This is a good thing (durable construction) and a bad thing (lots of pieces and parts, heavy, hard to steer and pedal if you're small enough to fit in the thing.) Once it was put together and my nephew crawled in, it was apparent he was not going to be able to make it move by himself, at least on the short carpet in the basement. And he is a tall, strong, coordinated 2 1/2 year old. His four year old sister started pushing him, which simply led to crashing into walls and cabinets--their dad started scheming how to use pipe insulation to fashion bumpers and save the finish of his recent remodel until the snow melted in the spring and it could move outside.

All in all, my feeling is that if you want a sturdy, old-school, good-looking gift for a strong kid who loves trucks, this is for him or her. If you want something easier to put together that is light and easy enough to pedal/steer for most little ones, you might want to consider something cheap and plastic that will fall apart in a couple of years. One note on durability: my brother and I had a cast-iron John Deer pedal tractor (very similar design) 35 years ago and it still works!