Anone know why some departments have them for tankers? And do you have one in your dept? Pics would be nice. There are barely any in the biggest tanker thread.
Used to have one long ago I'm told... no pics though. Back then around here limited manpower and greater hauling capacity warranted it I'm sure. One truck that can hold 6000 gallons of water or 3 trucks that can hold 2000 each. 1 driver instead of 3 is more hands you can put on the fire instead of behind a wheel.
We have one....in our area water is critical as we have to be able to supply our own...we have approximately a 218 square mile area and it is almost all rural....we tend to use a tanker task force to shuttle water and use the "super tanker" to nurse the portable ponds between tankers...we respond with an initial supply of 11000 gallons of water.....our "small" tanker holds about 2500 gallond and the "super tanker" holds about 6000....2 other departments in our area run super tankers also....
when we roll that's what we have available for 1st response......the rest is fed via tanker task force...Oh, by the way we also use CAFS for structure fires.......and no we aren't known as "cellar savers" Very agressive Department and have a level of respect from neighboring departments that we are very proud of.....
We do have however, a list of farmers in the area that have tanks we might be able to get. Some are 1 ton trucks with goose-neck trailers and 1500 gallon plastic tanks, some are semi's with a 4500 gallon trailer, others are straight truck (3 axle) with 3000 gallons...depends whether we can get them or not though.
we also have several Dry hydrants in the area that we can draw water from....most are at rivers, ponds in the area......so we have to have a second engine est a draft site to fill tankers....hopefully fairly close to the Fire scene