Fire Engines Photos

Although American fire departments all customize their pumpers to a high degree, this specification is fairly classical when it comes to a small volunteer fire company - which must pack a lot of capabilities into a single vehicle. As pointed out, such custom pumpers do not come cheap, and they also take a long time to build out. For this reason, large scale manufacturers like Pierce, E One and Seagrave have a big advantage, and numerous smaller custom builders have gone out of business in past decades.

These include American La France, who built this example, and many others. Names I can recall include Ward LaFrance, Maxim, Crimson, Young, Hahn, Boardman, Pirsch, Ahrens Fox and Crown Coach, while Mack discontinued fire trucks but continues to build very popular commercial trucks.

One feature of the US fire engine scene is that all of the custom manufacturers use either Detroit Diesel or Caterpillar engines, mostly Allison transmissions and other common chassis components, so parts availability for most items is not usually a problem even if the body builder has disappeared. Most use the same cab too - one of the mistakes American La France made was to design and build their own cab, which was an expensive and unnecessary decision.

So, despite all this concentration, fire departments still have a very wide choice when it comes down to how exactly they specify their engine, aerial, rescue, tanker or special rig, and who to choose to build it for them.

Manufacturers occasionally do build basic units for stock, if they are short of custom orders, but they try to avoid doing this because everybody knows these are units they badly want to sell -so pricing is under pressure.

Some have started doing rebuilds of older units, which can be quite cost effective, and permit cash- strapped departments to upgrade existing units with more modern equipment and storage solutions.

Added by Rob Johnson on 29 October 2023.

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