Fire Engines Photos

NAVISTAR, not a Stirling

Added by Annon on 29 July 2011.

Navistar is what we used to call International.

Sterling was an old US truck brand that disappeared in the 1950s; the brand was adopted by Daimler in 1997 when they took over Ford's US heavy truck division. Sterling existed till 2008, when Daimler discontinued it. Sterling trucks were overlapping Daimler's Freightliner trucks (but were different from them because they were Ford-derived), so Daimler decided to get rid of Sterling altogether and concentrate on Freightliner.

So now there are essentially 2 US lines of fire trucks on commercial chassis: Navistar and Freightliner. They look similar enough to challenge us truck-spotters.:-)

Added by Mike Feldman on 30 July 2011.

See picture 10759 for a typical earlier version of this International 4X4 brush truck. Although they can be used on structure fires, most of these have lower capacity pumps and less equipment than NFPA compliant structural pumpers.

Huge numbers of older Navistar, Ford and GMC brush pumpers are still in service, because many of this type of pumper are used only seasonally and still quite infrequently.

Despite all the custom fire engine builders here, the great majority of US fire departments are volunteer companies who tend to often buy Navistar or Freightliner chassis - because they are less expensive and easier to get serviced and repaired in smaller communities. I think the comparision is a bit similar to the way Commer, Bedford and Dodge historically competed with Dennis, Merryweather and ERF in the UK. Low penetration of large city fleets, but very high numbers sold to county brigades.

Added by Rob Johnson on 06 June 2013.

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