The Green Township (OH) Fire Department needed to replace a 1968 Jeep brush truck that had a single seat, a pump beside the driver, no roof, and no heater. But, the department wanted its new truck to be a multiple-use vehicle that could also run to vehicle, dumpster, and rubbish fires as well as serve as a backup medical rig.
“We also wanted the new truck to haul multiple firefighters, which meant a crew cab,” says Todd Baird, Green Township’s chief. “The other major thing we wanted was a truck with super singles on it, instead of dual rear wheels, because of all the mud we have to deal with in Ohio. We have a lot of farmland where we often have to get to the other side of a plowed field in order to put out a fire.”
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| 1 The Green Township (OH) Fire Department had KME build this quick-attack brush truck on a Ford F-550 4x4 four-door crew cab chassis powered by a V10 Triton gasoline engine and a Torqshift six-speed automatic transmission. It features a six-inch lift kit and super single rear wheels conversion. (Photos courtesy of Warren Fire Equipment.) |
Unique Choices
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| 3 Green Township’s brush truck has a pump panel at the rear of the truck that is semi-enclosed in what KME calls a municipal-style pump panel. |
Ray Capezzuto, apparatus salesperson for Warren Fire Equipment, which sold previous KME pumpers to the department, got together with the truck committee and helped design a quick-attack truck to fit its needs. “The department got a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant and used the Ohio State Terms Schedule (Ohio STS) to purchase the vehicle from KME,” Capezzuto says. “One of the things they did was to go with a gasoline engine instead of a diesel because of the weight differential between the two types of motors, with the gasoline motor being lighter.”
The resulting quick-attack truck is on a Ford F-550 4x4 chassis with a crew cab, powered by a V10 Triton gasoline engine and a Torqshift six-speed automatic transmission. The rig features KME’s 122-inch-long 3⁄16-inch aluminum skid unit body that holds a Hale HPX 200-B18 skid pump driven by a Briggs & Stratton 18-horsepower gasoline engine putting out 60 gallons per minute (gpm) at 150 pounds per square inch (psi), 150 gpm at 100 psi, and 245 gpm at 25 psi.
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| 2 The brush truck has a Hale HPX 200-B18 gasoline-driven pump, a 300-gallon water tank, a 10-gallon integral foam tank, and a FoamPro 1601 direct-injection foam system. |
The vehicle has a 300-gallon water tank with