Fire Engines Photos

North American pumpers with big extension ladders on overhead gantries are relatively rare, and are referred to as "quads".

This is short for the official designation of a quadruple combination - pump, tank, hose bed and ladders, and goes back to the days when horse drawn units were all single purpose. Most departments carried long extension ladders only on dedicated ladder trucks or aerials, and limited their pumpers to a short side-hung ladder.

The "quad" usually showed up in smaller departments which could not afford a dedicated ladder truck, or at specific engine stations which were deemed to be too far from the nearest ladder company truck.

The "quint" added an aerial ladder to the quad, for a complete multi function unit - and these are what we find in smaller fire departments nowadays.

Added by Rob Johnson on 30 September 2017.

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