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pumper/tanker
Just curious. I was a small city FF in a large urban county. Other than the all too frequent major brush fires, hydrants are a plenty here. The tenders/tankers here could easily be converted to milk trucks just by taking off the lights and siren. My curiosity then is why the need for these huge tankers with 6 man seating, foam systems and 2000gpm pumps.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by firechief911 on
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whats the question do you have a pumper tanker you dont need .
hear in the south we might have a hydrant every 4 miles we need every tanker we can get sometimes . we cant afford to buy one. we have tried to get one through fema but no sucess yet. but the fairness in that is another discussion
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Permalink Reply by T.J. on
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every one has their own need, because of more people can fit on them and some use them as multi task truck.
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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on
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I'll try to better my question. I have never been a big fan of 'multi-purpose ' apparatus. Do you use a quint like a truck or an engine? Are these mega tankers being used as an engine with just a larger than normal water tank or as a transporter of water. If they just transport water, then why do they need 2000gpm pumps?
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Permalink Reply by Wes Anders on
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Well the thing is most of use in the rural areas cant afford to buy apparatus to handle each job so if we can get one that can handle several task in one unit it saves us money. Most of the departments in my area build equipment ourselves to save money my department has a 5000 gallon military tank trailer we use for a tanker we have a toms snack van we converted into a mobile command that is also our salvage and equipment van.
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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As TJ said, we all have our own needs. We meet them as best we can. My service doesn't have bulk water carriers, if we need them we hire them.
We don't split ourselves into 'engine' and 'truck' people, and you can call all of our firefighting vehicles 'multi-purpose'! The strictly urban appliances are Pumpers, and the rural area vehicles are Tankers which are used for structural or wildfire firefighting work. The tankers are also used in a 'water relay' when the situation demands. We don't have 'trucks' in the way North America has. And the last time I saw an aerial appliance in use (we don't use them very often) it was as a pumper, it had the biggest pump so it was put at the nearest hydrant and pumped the 700 metres, with a pumper/tanker, to the fire. (Though some people were almost kidded into believing that it's boom was up and it squirted all the way to the fire...)
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Permalink Reply by Justin Buck on
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we are a rural fire dept. we have one tanker that holds two FF. i dont know any dept. would have 6 person tanker
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Permalink Reply by Megan on
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im from a dept where we do have fire hydrants around our fire dept and say a 5 mile radius maybe but not that many like 10 or 15 and we have to rely on the water we can carry to a site cause we be out in the boondies lol but we have a combo pumper tanker built by custom fire i will be working on getting pics up
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Permalink Reply by Damon Dyer on
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They come in real handy in the rural areas when you don't have a lot of people .
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Permalink Reply by Frank Svitak on
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We were lucky to get one of those grants, even tho they did not give us the amount we were asking for. We asked for $350g to replace an aging pumper and an old out of service converted oil tanker. They felt we only needed $250g so we had to finance the rest. But what we did, is design a Tanker/Pumper that would fill both roles. It has a 6 man cab with 2 extra fold down seats, a 1250 pump, 3000 gallons of water, 2 150' 1.75"crosslays, 1 150' 2.5" crosslay, 1 300' 1.75" rear preconnect, 1 300' 3" rear preconnect, 1 100" 1.75" side mount trash line, and a 1000gpm deck gun, and 1000' of 4" supply LDH. This serves as our first due pumper, and also responds on mutual aid calls as a tender. We do not have any hydrants in our district, and the closest is about a 3 mile run, so we have to bring our water with us. The other great benefit is, being all volunteer, when we have day time calls and are light on people, and have to wait a little longer to get other apparatus to us, we have a little bit more water to work with.
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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This is our Pumper/Tanker. A 2004 KME; 515hp Cummins Diesel, 2,500 gal. of water, a 2000 gpm Hale pump, A/B Foam Pro, 2200' 4" LDH, and a 6 man cab.
This was obviously from my last post on the "Now this is a Tanker". We have the exact truck that you are using as an example. So I will give you the logic behind our truck committee's decision on building that specific truck.
Very few departments in NH have the large milk truck / tanker set-up. They have either a 300gpm pump or a very small dump discharge. When flowing anything above the pump capacity of the milk truck is usually a hinderance in the fire operation.
So that leaves us with a dumping operation into a porta tank with a milk truck. So if the milk truck is set-up with a 4" discharge, the same occurs with the water supply pumper drafting faster than the dump tanker can deliver. This occurs usually when there is a significant structure fire. Yes it would provide great water supply to a brush fire but they usually are far from any road. I also understand they bring, 4000-5000 gallons of water at a time but I can name a bunch of problems, starting with the previously stated and then let's add in a rural New Hampshire response, where many of our roads are not capable to drive a tractor trailer on, or how about getting it re-supplied. Now lets talk about the winter time operations. Tractor-trailers are pretty much grounded during a blizzard. Or having a firefighter who is trained, certified, and proficient in driving a tractor trailer. Older non-tractor trailer milk truck conversions (bulk single or dual axle trucks) are top heavy, usually non-baffled and tend to tip over. Then lets add in that the person might only drive a FD tractor-trailer unit once or twice a year to an emergency. During emergencies, unless you get a milk truck into the scene early, they are difficult to manuever around many obstacles like previously arrived fire engines, ladders or supply hose. Then once empty, where are you going to turn around a tractor trailer. I once saw someone have to drive 15 extra miles (at 25mph) to get the thing turned around??? That 5000 gallons of water was gone a long time ago, plus if it dumps that slow it usually fills just as slow or SLOWER.
Now for the pumper-tanker combination as you, (I guess are not in favor of) Well in our case we are the only fulltime fire department in our county. We respond mutual aid to towns who are 10-30 minutes away and at times are first due to their fire. Instead of responding with a small 2 man cab tanker or an engine and tanker (2 piece response) we built a combination unit in which we can respond with 6 guys. If first due, we have brought alot of water and go to work as an engine company with 6. If we are not first due, and get assigned as a tanker to shuttle water, we drop off four guys at the fire in full ppe, scba and the remaining two get into the shuttle mix with a very efficient tanker. The truck is capable of dumping all 2500 gallons in less than two minutes, the crew doesn't even get out of the truck, the water supply officer marshall's them into the porta tank and they dump remotely from the cab. The rig is back on the road and can turn the trip very efficiently as the truck is smaller than a milk truck, it can turn around if needed in a residential driveway (yes, maybe a few extra pull ups) but it can be done and it fills as fast as the water supply pumper can put it in...
Luckily, the city I work in is about 85% covered by municipal hydrants, 80-90 psi, 1000-2500 gpms! But our newer outlying residential district has big 3000-4000 sq ft. homes which require serious water and most of our surrounding communities have no hydrants. We also just adopted a residential sprinkler code to these target hazards.
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Jay, I am primarily assigned as an officer on a quint in our west district. We are charged to be at times an engine (first due in our district) and a truck company when responding to the other district. The combo units are very adaptable, if you have personnel, training and the mentality to be fluent depending on the objectives...
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Wow. A paid dept with 6 guys available for one piece. We could only hope for that here. My little city has 6 guys but they man 2 engine companies. Except for the big city, almost every apparatus, including truck companies, are 3-manned.
My post wasn't intended to be insulting and I hope you didn't take it that way. My experience has always involved '100%' hydranted areas.
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