Bumper pumpers

[slackjawedyokel]

The talk about plain janes brought back a lot of memories of the old bumper pumpers. I used to sell used fire apparatus and when I would offer a front mount to a rural department , they would say " but we want a factory built truck"
I would try and explain the advantages such as -1 easy to operate 2 easy to work on (you can rebuild the pump standing flat footed) 3 they can pump and roll 4 perfect truck for drafting from ponds as you are square with the source and your drive wheels are on higher ground. But no , they wanted a "real truck"
The only real negatives I found were , the operator was in front of the truck if it tried to roll, they slightly restricted the flow to the radiator , they could be driven back with the pump still engaged ,(the driver would have to be deaf not to notice) and if you did lay in with LDH you would have to pull enough to make an easy loop around the front.
But all in all a good fit for a small espically rural dept.

[Command6]

While I never operated a front-mount pump, I do remember some in my area.

C6

[Chenzo]

Our third out, a 92 GMC pumper/tanker, has a front mount pump. That is the easiest thing in the world to pump.

[SFD_E73_RET]

We had two on the department I was on when I first got on but as our rural area disapeared so did they. They were very easy to pump. Here's one that just rolled off the line at Toyne.

[HuntPA]

When we were looking at our needs for the grant that we got, we tried really hard to find a front mount. The manufacturers weren't really excited about mounting a 1500 gpm pump on the front of a 60,000# chasis. If we could have found one (that was price competitive) it would have definitely been our top choice.

Best thing about the front mount is that if you are a good operator, you can literally run them blind folded.

[LaFireEducator]

They are still quite popular in northwestern Vermont, especially with departments that do a lot of drafting out of the local ponds and lakes.

They defiantly have thier advantages through require a lot of piping if you want preconnects.

[donethat]

When I was a wee lad, my little home town Fire Dept. had two Barton American Front Mounts on a 1951 Chevy and a 1953 Ford. Both had small six cylinder engines. I lived about a mile from the fire house on the edge of our small town and can remember them screaming by the house at a blazing 45 miles an hour with four of the vollies riding the tail board. They took a while to get there, but were reliable.