No matter what the size of your fire department or other operational characteristics that may influence the makeup of your apparatus fleet, every department generally operates some type of pumping apparatus. In your area it may be referred to as an engine, pumper, wagon or triple, but the mission of the engine company apparatus is to successfully deploy personnel, a fire pump, hose and water to the incident in a safe and controlled manner. For this reason we will spend the next several articles describing some of the concepts that you should consider when developing specifications for engine company apparatus.
Not so long ago, it was fairly common practice to simply
