By Alan M. Petrillo
Manufacturers say the traditional tanker/tender (no pump except a small water transfer pump) may not be dead, but it probably is on life support.
The majority of tankers being built today, they say, are more tanker-pumpers than the traditional type of water hauler, although there still are enclaves of true tanker activity around the country.
1 Sutphen built this 4,000-gallon tanker with a 750-gpm Hale Side Kick pump on a dual-rear-axle Kenworth chassis for the Hopewell (NJ) Fire Department. (Photos 1 and 2 courtesy of Sutphen East Corp.)
Pump Size
Darryl Rhyne, general manager of Sutphen East, says that Sutphen has seen a tremendous increase in tanker orders in general and now has more on order than it ever has before. “As far as the type of tanker, we haven’t built a tanker without a pump on it for more than 10 years,” Rhyne says. “Every tanker has some form of pump on it, and we’ve seen a lot of diversity in the type of pump. And, there’s been a tremendous decline in elliptical tankers—four years ago half the tankers we built were elliptical with a stainless steel wrap. But, now we have only one on order, while all the rest of the tankers we’re building are wetside configuration.”
2 The Lakeville (PA) Fire Company had Sutphen build a 3,500-gallon tanker with a Hale 500-gpm Side Kick pump on a Kenworth chassis.
Rhyne notes that Sutphen has been building a lot of tankers with a Hale Side Kick pump underslung under the tank. “We can now go up to 1,500 gallons per minute (gpm) in the Side Kick configuration,” he says, “although the typical sizes being put on tankers are 750 gpm and 1,000 gpm. The main reason fire departments are adding bigger pumps to their tankers is for versatility because they want the vehicles to be self-contained units, especially when staffing is often such a crunch.”
Grady North, product manager for E-ONE, agrees that the big change in tankers has been the size of pumps being put on them. “We have built tankers in the past without a pump, but now all of them have a pump,” North says. “And, departments are moving away from the 250-gpm and 500-gpm transfer pumps and putting up to 1,500-gpm pumps on their tankers. The main reason is if they have to run their tankers as first-due vehicles, they will have the pumping capacity needed to handle a fire.”
North says E-ONE has been building t
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