Delivering Pizza with a Cement Truck—Revisited

By Ed Boring

Back in the ’90s, it was an understatement to say that I was a Bruno groupie. Thanks to a former boss who pioneered command school, I was fortunate to assist with facilitation of this extraordinary learning and enlightenment environment and spend countless hours with the late Phoenix (AZ) Chief Alan “Bruno” Brunacini and his disciples.

One of the most intriguing thoughts engrained in my head was the concept of delivering the right service in the right vehicle. The late chief’s presentation “Delivering Pizza with a Cement Truck” is as timely now as it was then.

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25 YEARS LATER

Just as predicted, medical calls continue to increase and consume more of our resources. Fires continue to decrease, and we spend more of our day performing nontraditional duties and in nontraditional roles, and we tend to provide these services in increasingly larger and heavier multi-use rigs.

So, what is Mrs. Smith calling us for today? Let’s look at the data. The National Fire Academy (NFA) is doing a remarkable job of taking National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) data and crunching it into meaningful information. I encourage you to regularly dig into the data as well as your own, to really understand what we do daily.

Nationally:

• Mrs. Smith called for our service 26,880,800 times in 2017.
• She needed EMS 17,203,712 times, or 64% of the time.
• Mrs. Smith had something on fire 1,075,232 times, or 4% of the time.
• She had a structure fire 482,500 times, a little under 2% of total calls.
• Mrs. Smith needed us about 8,600,000 times, or 32%, for other responses that were not fire or EMS related.

As a whole we, the American fire service, responded to things that were not on fire 96% of the time and responded to structures that were not on fire 98% of the time.

Mrs. Smith not only wants us to respond to emergencies, but she also wants us to install and routinely inspect her smoke detectors, teach her how to use an automatic external defibrillator, and teach community CPR. She wants us to educate her on how to reduce all kinds of risk and, increasingly, she expects us stop in at civic group meetings to educate her and share our annual reports, tell her what’s new, and tell her how we are good stewards of her tax dollars, among many other things.

Rewind back to 1995, annual reports, teaching community CPR, community risk reduction. Back then, it was like, “What are they and why would firefighters do that stuff?” Bruno saw it all coming. He realized our roles were changing because the expectations of those we serve and those who fund us were changing. For us to remain relevant, we would have to find new meaning, a little like life in general.

To bring context to his analogy, pizza is the array of the services we provide both emergent and nonemergent, and the cement truck is our typical fire apparatus. When Mrs. Smith needs our metaphorical pizza (aka services), she wants it to be hot (appropriate resources for her issue) and fast (timely).

One method employed by Bruno to better deliver pizza was the use of ladder tenders. In lieu of driving 65,000-pound or greater apparatus 100% of the time to address the 2% problem, he created junior rigs that carried all the loose equipment, ground ladders, and personnel—everything but the aerial ladder. These rigs respond to all the calls that traditional ladder companies would and provide the same level of service. Ladder tenders increase the life span of the senior aerials and have the reciprocal effect of rough roads not tearing up the apparatus and heavy apparatus tearing up the roadway. Additional benefits include reduced cost per mile to fuel and maintain apparatus and reduced collisions with smaller units. It is a pretty novel concept that has passed the test of time, at least in the Phoenix metro area. It is institutionalized in the region and integral to the operations. It’s like they have always been there. Ladder tenders are an example of apparatus being less cement truck-like and more pizza deliveryesque.

Our cement trucks have continually evolved into multi-functional (pumper-tanker, quint, rescue pumper, and more) fire apparatus that we specify, purchase, and build today. To our credit, we have done a great job of combining multiple fire suppression needs into single units; pumper/tankers bring their own water, fire pump, equipment, and personnel to the incident. Wildland urban interface apparatus have combined traditional structural fire suppression with wildland, and we have honed combining vehicle rescue capabilities with fire suppression to a fine art.

This consolidation of capabilities is in part from the desire to be more efficient, to do more with less, and to reduce costs and maintain services but, like it or not, the reason those topics are in play is because fire engines go to more calls overall and fewer fires.

So, now that we have consolidated multiple fire suppression activities into singular units, what else can we do? Let’s keep talking about our mission, what we can do to create apparatus that fit the mission, what the hurdles are, and sustainability.

ED BORING is a retired deputy chief of the Hilton Head (SC) Fire Department, moving through the ranks after starting with the department in 2001. Previously, he was an officer with the Millersville (PA) Fire Department, having started his career in the fire service in 1980. He has a BA in fire science from Columbia Southern University and is a member of the Fire Department Safety Officers Association. He is a past National Fire Protection Association 350 Confined Space Safe Work Practices committee member and past alternate member of the NFPA 1006 Technical Committee Rescue Technician Professional Qualifications. He’s also a past committee member, LODD Investigation of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. He is currently fleet strategies manager for HME, Inc. He also is an accredited chief fire officer and peer assessor through the Commission on Fire Accreditation International.