So... I'm just curious as to some of the general and more specific names given to apparatus from the US and around the world... for example, our pumper is called an engine (yeah, i know alot of people call it that), airel apparatus around our area are refered to as towers, ladders, airel's, trucks... an ambulance is known as a bus or a rig.
More specifically... we have a huge tanker that we call the whale and our older pumper is known as the "popemobile" due to the very high roof on the crew area.
We had a 1959 Ford V8 gasoline engine we called "Drag Nasty" because she would drag on the hills nastily. We would be in grandma gear just before the cresting the hill, thinking maybe we should tell the guys on the back step to start pushing. But she would pump like a scalded hog.
We had an older tanker that we use to call "The Silver Bullet"
We always wanted to paint it to look like a refreshing can of a certain brand of an adult beverage with the dump valve being the "pop top". Thought some citizens in the area might not like that.....
Our county rescue squad has been called "The Smurf Truck"... blue is a perfect match.
When we put our 6500 gallon tanker, which is a tractor trailer rig, in service it immediately hooked the nick name BIG BERTHA. But due to being a co-ed VFD some claimed that was sorta derogatory to the ladies so when the unit went out for a new paint job with gold lettering and all the trimmings it came back as the "ROLLING HYDRANT" . There are several of these VLTs around our rural area and some have unique names. "BIG RED POND", "LAKE ON WHEELS" "TIDAL WAVE" and one i thought was really neat "SUPER SQUIRT" with a big cartoon on the rear end of the tank!
The rest of our engines, tenders and service trucks are under a numbering system. Each station has a 3 digit number starting at 500. My station is A-500 and as station captain I am A-510, my assistant is A-511 and our engine is
A-512, Tanker is 513 and our service / rescue engine is 514. our district covers 400+ square miles, we have 12 stations and 30 units.