By Alan M. Petrillo
Bear Lake Township (MI) Fire Department had a 1978 front-mount pumper that badly needed to be replaced, so when the township put its vehicle replacement plan in action and the citizenry voted to approve it, Bear Lake Township’s chief quickly got started on deciding what the new rig should look like.
"We made a short specification list of what we definitely wanted on the new pumper," Sean Adams, Bear Lake's chief, says. "We put that short spec list out to 16 vendors and got 14 replies of interest. Then we drew up the full specs and narrowed the vendors down to six. We received four bids and went with Spencer Manufacturing for several reasons."
Adams notes the main reasons the Bear Lake truck committee chose Spencer are that "it's a Michigan-based company, and also the cab and chassis comes from a Michigan company. Second, they came in with the most reasonable price. And third, Spencer was very responsive to us on our questions, needs and clarifications."
The resulting fire truck is built on a Spartan Metro Star cab and chassis, with a Cummins 400-hp ISL9 engine, an Allison 3000 EVS automatic transmission, a Hale QFlo Plus 1,250-gallon-per-minute (gpm) pump, an APR 1,000-gallon polypropylene water tank, a 20-gallon foam cell, and a Hale Foam Logix 2.1 single-agent foam system.
The Bear Lake Township Fire Department operates out of one station with 16 volunteer firefighters, protecting approximately 60 square miles of mostly residential and some commercial properties on Michigan's northern Lower Peninsula. Adams says the department runs an average of 200 calls a year for fire protection, rescue, and first-response emergency medical services (EMS) for a population of approximately 2,400.
The department's other fire apparatus include a 2000 Darley pumper with a 1,500-gpm pump, 1,000-gallon water tank, and compressed air foam system (CAFS); a 1987 Ford commercial chassis water tender (tanker) with a 2,000-gallon water tank; a 1987 GMC wildland vehicle with a 200-gpm Darley skid unit pump, 200-gallon water tank, and five-gallon foam tank; a Kubota utility terrain vehicle (UTV) with a 100-gpm skid unit pump, a 75-gallon water tank, and a two-gallon foam tank; a 12-foot rescue boat; and a 1997 medium-duty non-transport light rescue-ambulance.
Steve Buckner, the salesman who sold the pumper to Bear Lake Township, said he brought the department a Spartan demo chassis that had on-the-floor heating in the cab, as well as electric and heated windows. "Those things are important in their area of the country," Buckner observes, "and the committee liked those options in the vehicle."
Buckner says the Spencer-built pumper has a wheelbase of 190 inches; an overall length of 32 feet, two inches; an overall height of nine feet, seven inches; and a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 40,000 pounds. Price on the pumper without equipment was $384,577.
Grant Spencer, general manager of Spencer Manufacturing, says the pumper has two 1¾-i