Fire Dept Wildland truck opportunity

[NEIOWA]

An M-35 is NOT a great and easy route. With 600 gallons of water you will be OVERWEIGHT for off road. And Pods are not baffled which will increase the danger. Not to mention no ROPS. Unless they are purpose rebuilt by a commercial brush truck company, FD's should stay away from M35's. There are plenty of NIOSH LODD reports to back that up.

I said M35A3 I did not say M35.

1.) A full 600gal pod is 5400lb. Add a couple FF equipment etc at NFPA1901 and over the offroad 5000lb payload rating.

I have 10 baffled pods I picked up from DRMO sitting within 100ft me. You can come see them if you like or can get you a interior photo. NO not ALL pods are baffled and without looking inside you can't tell. Perhaps with the mfg date. I'm told baffles were added to later pods but have never seen what date that would be.

I'll stand behind one pod in a M35A3 is a great and easy solution for a rural FD wildland rig. Go to Roscommon if you want more great info of converting DOD vehicles (appropriately for FD use.

2.) ROPS? you have a ROPS on your F550? Given what is available DOD surplus the M35A3 is the best medium size option available. I have a 4x4 IH that got from AF surplus but not may of those available. For manpower limitations of modern/current FD the A3 is the only version of the M35 I'd recommend.

Ever seen a M35 with 1500gal? That's something to be concerned about. 600gal NO

Last week I was in a fire station and there was an M54 with a 3500gal tank. Now THATS SCARRY.

 

[NEIOWA]

An option for you to look at is the Tri-Max CAFS system. It uses up to a 200 gal tank with SCUBA bottles to charge the system. They're not real cheap, but they put out a LOT of foam for the size of the system. And you wouldn't have the weight to deal with. But you still wouldn't have ROPS on a deuce. They do make smaller units that would fit in some of the Humvee's. We had a couple of 1025's, but we got rid of them because of maint. problems and safety issues. They have poor visibility on the road, poor crash protection, and are very noisy so we had to put headsets in to hear and talk on the radio. We went to a commercial built grass truck.

You can, in theory, get a cold CAFS system out of DOD surplus. Have seen several listed in the last couple years. A small wheeled cart type. Would in fact make a great HMMWV system.

When/where did you have a Milspec HMMWV in fire use? On active duty? To my knowledge only recently release to Cops thru LESO and FD as of last week (in theory).

I started working with HMMWV at 9ID at Ft Lewis in 1985 - same versions now going into DRMO system. Great trucks. You overload them and they break. Likely the biggest problem with using one for wildland truck then is going to be finding repair parts.

Remember that many of us in rural America are not "checkbook" FD.

 

[skidunits4you]

I to have pods with baffles. I would only use the ones with them. I build wildland engines for departments all over New England and by NFPA 1906 and GVW and axle rating the A3 will be ok with 600 gals. I would rather see them all using 5 tons but they take what they can get. As stated above ROPS would be great but most Fire Equipment does not have it. and none of the F550s you see have it. As it has been stated many times the most important think is training. Don't drive it like a car and it will be much safer.

 

[MRFD715]

We have an M54 with a 3,000 gallon tank. I absolutely refuse to drive it because it has absolutely no business being on the road set up like that, and most everyone else feels the same way. We just acquired an M915A4 to put the tank on, that will be a huge improvement for us.

Our state forestry rep has lots of those pods and we grabbed 3 when we picked up our 915, they all have baffles. He told us that several FD's around the state use the pods with the M35A3's for brush rigs and have had great success with them.

 

[greenjeepster]

They would make great Fire Chief rigs. We need to encourage as many fire depts as possible to snatch these up... In 10-15 years when they start coming back in in large volumes DOD isn't going to want to deal with them and the regs will get changed. It is one thing for them to take them in from units and crush them, different if they have to collect them from Private hands.

It will be like all the Cannons and artillery on town greens all over this country... they all belong to DOD, but DOD has forgotten about most of them... About 10 years ago one local town disposed of some cannon balls they had on the town green, then realized that they were DOD property and notified them of their mistake. DOD couldn't have cared less...

 

[John S-B]

You can, in theory, get a cold CAFS system out of DOD surplus. Have seen several listed in the last couple years. A small wheeled cart type. Would in fact make a great HMMWV system.

When/where did you have a Milspec HMMWV in fire use? On active duty? To my knowledge only recently release to Cops thru LESO and FD as of last week (in theory).

I started working with HMMWV at 9ID at Ft Lewis in 1985 - same versions now going into DRMO system. Great trucks. You overload them and they break. Likely the biggest problem with using one for wildland truck then is going to be finding repair parts.

Remember that many of us in rural America are not "checkbook" FD.

My rural FD had two HMMWV's, one was set up as a grass truck with a 150 gal tank pressurized by SCBA's, the other carried a stokes and tools for grass fires. The one in the pic is the latter. The grass unit had the rear hatch removed and had a snap on vinyl tarp. They got them some time in the late nineties, they were there when I got on in '02. We got rid of them in '09 along with the old Chevy and bought a new grass rig. The HMMWV's went back to DRMO. We took out everything but the tank. Another FD got the one with the tank and added their own pressure system. They used a regulator not suited to the purpose and the tank blew killing a young firefighter. The home made system we had plus the lack of shoulder belts and other factor are why we got rid of them. I wish the goverment would do more for depts that don't have adequate equipment. I'm just glad our citizens support us.

 

[John S-B]

Better pics

 

[John S-B]

I said M35A3 I did not say M35.

1.) A full 600gal pod is 5400lb. Add a couple FF equipment etc at NFPA1901 and over the offroad 5000lb payload rating.

I have 10 baffled pods I picked up from DRMO sitting within 100ft me. You can come see them if you like or can get you a interior photo. NO not ALL pods are baffled and without looking inside you can't tell. Perhaps with the mfg date. I'm told baffles were added to later pods but have never seen what date that would be.

I'll stand behind one pod in a M35A3 is a great and easy solution for a rural FD wildland rig. Go to Roscommon if you want more great info of converting DOD vehicles (appropriately for FD use.

2.) ROPS? you have a ROPS on your F550? Given what is available DOD surplus the M35A3 is the best medium size option available. I have a 4x4 IH that got from AF surplus but not may of those available. For manpower limitations of modern/current FD the A3 is the only version of the M35 I'd recommend.

Ever seen a M35 with 1500gal? That's something to be concerned about. 600gal NO

Last week I was in a fire station and there was an M54 with a 3500gal tank. Now THATS SCARRY.

I haven't been around a pod since the early '90's, so they probably added baffles after I was using them. We originally had two in a deuce with a pump unit, and hauled a third in a trailer. Mostly hauled diesel and Mogas, but occaisionally JP4. Then someone decided that was too much so we only had one in the deuce and one on a trailer. We didn't think much about safety then. As for ROPS, I'd rather take my chances in an F-whatever than a soft top deuce. I'm surprised the Army didn't get more of us young idiots killed back in the day with those. We used to do some stupid stuff.