By Alan M. Petrillo
Wildland and urban interface (WUI) firefighters are finding they sometimes have to take their rigs into tight terrain or over marginally stable roadways and tracks. That means they are seeking smaller yet hard-hitting quick-attack-style wildland firefighting vehicles, which manufacturers are building in answer to their needs.
Customer Needs
Doug Kelley, wildland product manager for KME, says there are two distinct customer types in the wildland vehicle market: those who do wildland firefighting and not much else and those who have to make their wildland truck a multipurpose vehicle. "In the West, the wildland fire-prone states spend more money on dedicated wildland trucks," Kelley says, "while in the East and Midwest, the trucks tend to be dual-purpose vehicles, unless you're talking about small pickups or flatbeds."
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| KME built this Ridgerunner Type 3 wildland pumper for the Altus (OK) Fire Department on a Navistar 7400 4x4 chassis with a 1,500-gpm midship pump and a secondary pump for pump and roll. The rig carries 1,000 gallons of water and 20 gallons of Class A foam. (Photo courtesy of KME.) |
Kelley notes that the shape of wildland vehicles can be very different, depending on the region of the country where they are used. "The trend in the last few years has been toward purpose-built wildland trucks, which means 4x4 because firefighters want them to go far off the road," he says. "They are usually on a commercial chassis and come in two classes. The first is the Ford- and Dodge-size Type 6 truck with factory 4x4 and a 19,500-pound gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR), while the other is on a larger chassis like an International 7400 or Freightliner M2 that typically has a 35,000-pound GVWR and up."
Some fire agencies are looking to carry more equipment on their wildland rigs, Clarence Grady, application manager for fire suppression and foam systems at Pierce Manufacturing Inc., says, and they have opted for 26-inch extended cabs instead of the four-door cabs, so that Pierce was able to put a longer rear body on the vehicles. "We use a short pumper body that puts a 26-inch compartment between the pump and the rear wheel, so there's more storage, and they also can get a bigger water tank on the unit," he says. "A 500-gallon water tank is about the maximum on the standard Type 3 configuration, but with the longer body, we can fit it with a 750-gallon water tank."
Scott Oyen, vice president of sales at Rosenbauer, says that Type 3 wildland bodies such as on Rosenbauer's Timberwolf WUI unit are typically chosen by departments that want to carry more equipment compared with the smaller chassis and bodies of Type 6 wildland vehicles. "On the Type 6 units, there's not a lot to the bodies, which often are shop-built on flatbeds with minimal compartmentation," Oyen says. "The trend for a while was to pack a lot of equipment on them, but they lost maneuverability with all that weight, so the Type 6's have gotten leaner again, coming back to the 'less is more' philosophy."
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The Timberwolf is Rosenbauer's Type 3 WUI pumper that has a 1,500-gpm Rosenbauer NH pump that can pump at both volume and high pressure at the same time and also carry up to 1,000 gallons of water. (Photo courtesy of Rosenbaue
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