What Colour Is Your Fire Truck?

[bubblesboyd]

I am curious to hear from my peers about what colour your fire vehicles are and do you think it makes a difference in visibility when approaching traffic (or traffic approaching you)?

All our vehicles are red in colour. I think that the colour does make a difference because many think they are approaching utility vehicles when they see yellow. It's a whole new topic to discuss people's driving and stupidity!!!!!

I am noticing that many of the new fire vehicles are now featured as red and white...less yellow is coming off the assembly line. Have others noticed too that red gets a better response?

Heather (a.k.a bubblesboyd)

[colfireman]

Our rigs have been White since 1964 when we purchased our First "New" truck.Ford cabover chassis with a Thibault body.In the Mid 80's we added the 6" Red reflective stripe to them.

[pfire21]

We have seven rigs, and five different paint schemes.<br />Our brush truck is black over red, the rescue is white over a lime green, first due engine is solid lime green, an orange-red tanker, our second due engine, air van, and other tanker are all solid red. We are recieving a new tanker next week which is white over red. All future apparatus are to be painted white over red as well. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[Assistant7]

We currently have two color schemes, only because we are changing them slowly (as we buy new pieces). The old scheme was white over red with a white scotchlite stripe. The new color scheme is black over red with a yellow stripe

[firefighter584]

My Fire Company Has Green Vehicles With Gold Lettering...

[Firemedic 61]

Our trucks are an electric green. This was an accident, Pierce mixed the wrong colors when they were spraying our Quantum and told us to come up and take a look. If we didn't like it they would strip and repaint it, if we did like it they would give us the paint job free. The dept. decided to keep the new color and Pierce named it after our dept, Palm Beach Gardens green. It is truly more visible than red, and it keeps it's color at night, unlike red which tends to look black. It's a cool color but I perfer the traditional red. You might wand to check Seminole Co Fl, they have white and day glow orange.

[dragonfyre]

Our 3 older pieces are white over red, our new truck (see Apparatus section, January 2002 listings; Friendship Fire Company) is Chicago Black over Red.

Our police department recently donated a Chevy Caprice for a chief's car and that was also painted black & red.

We just purchased a used rescue to replace our 1972 truck and it's green & white so it will be repainted our new color scheme.

As for FM61's comments about red looking black at night if the truck is NFPA complient with proper lighting and striping it doesn't matter what color it is. We had members who didn't like the new paint scheme for that reason but the new truck show up better at night than our older ones.

[ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: dragon-fyre ]

[ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: dragon-fyre ]</p>

[BFD196]

Ours are all white. Our rescue which is fairly new, and our truck(recently refurbed) both have a red stripe running along the side. Eventually, we hope to get the red stripe on everything. White shows up a lot better at night, which is why they decided to paint them that color a long time ago..

[chris a]

My dept. has all red trucks with 4"white reflective stripe and a 1" blue stripe the blue stripe is very noticable.We have 3 ETA's,1 med.duty rescue,1 4 wheel drive brush truck and a chevy van which is used by our dive team.

[PFD147]

My department has white vehicles with a 1-6-1 red reflective stripe on the sides and gold leaf lettering. As for visibility, that all depends on if the driving public are paying attention on that particular day. We use rotators,strobes and oscillators with digital and mechanical sirens on all of our vehicles and people still don't move! Hopefully the new traffic laws hear in Illinois will change that. the first couple of $10,000 fines should open some eyes!

[sandycreektwp]

Has anyone watched "Wheels of Justice" "The Fire Engine" ? It was a documentary on the History Channel about the history of the fire engine.

Fire engines were, and still are loved by everyone. A real prestiege piece of equipment. If your dept had money, you painted your trucks red because red paint was very time consuming to make and therefore very expensive. Also, the fabulous true goldleaf trim was a must to show you had the best piece in the town.<br /> A study was done and found out that red was hard to see during the night, and that lime green was a highly visible color night or day.

If you ever have the opportunity to view this documentary, go for it! It's extremely interesting. Oh, by the way, all our trucks are red, and no we aren't rich. <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

[EngCo2WFD_Burndog]

Omaha orange here, with white and gold trim,unique!!

[old timer]

Our engines were tradionally blaze orange over white, and our Ems units were similar.

Our new Rescue-Pumper is all white with a larger orange stripe that eventually comes down to a smaller 6 inch stripe.

The newer paint idea was made to save the department a little money and to change the appearance of all the vehicles. We tend to replace our Ems rigs every 6 years so that was no problem, and the other Engine will be replaced within 5 years, so they will all match again.

But, I like most that grew up in and around the fire service, still like red fire trucks.

Keep doing it for the right reasons!!!!!!!!!!!

[mike021c]

Our trucks are white over lime green, the ladder only has a white upper half the rest is lime green. our ambulance's are all lime green. everything has a 10 inch white scotchlite. our trucks also have, for looks, reflective lettering on the trucks to show up at night to look good.

[Firebear230]

We have three pieces of equipment. Our older truck was originally red, but, was painted white with blue stripping. We have a small quick attack with the same paint scheme. Our new truck is a 2000 E-One painted all red with gold leaf lettering. It is nice, but, they added our city decal which is white (!). All in all, I don't think it matters what color your truck is, no body sees it coming anyway!?! <img src="eek.gif" border="0">

[Box2565]

There is a Photo Post section on the fire web site <a href="http://www.rescue-net.com/" target="_blank">Rescue-Net</a>. There are many types of rigs with a variety of different paint schemes. <br />In Madison, Indiana F.D. each company has a different paint job on their rig: Co. 1-Yellow; Co. 2-Red; Co. 3-White; Co. 4-Shmarock Green; Co. 5-White over Red; Co. 6-White over Blue.

Other unusual paint colors shown are kelly green & white (EMS Engine posted 12-31-01); Birdsboro black over red (posted 12-26-01; Rescue pumper white over lime green 4x4 with black Scotchlite (posted 12-24); Green Twp White with Kelly green accents (posted 12-17); Middletown tower black over red (posted 12-9); Hamilton Twp black/red (posted 12-5); Minotola black (posted 11-20); Jackson Mills (a really neat rig) white with green accents (posted 11-17); Blue Grass Army Depot black/red (posted 11-14); Felicity silver and blue (posted 11-11); Wheeling orange and white (posted 11-8 & 10-31); Glendale black (posted 11-6); and Clearcreek gray and red (posted 10-29).

You can tell from the listing that there are many different color schemes to be seen on the web site. In addition there are dozens of other apparatus photos showing interesting rigs from around the U.S.

I guess I'm old fashioned. My favorite color scheme is still solid red....

By the way, if folks can't see the lights and hear the siren, you're in trouble no matter what the color!<br /> <img src="cool.gif" border="0">

[martinm]

All our vehicles are Volvo FL6/14's with red cabs & aluminium body/lockers behind. Also we have yellow reflective striping & blue lights all around. At the back is red & yellow anti collision striping all the way from the wheels to the top. Red is the traditional colour for UK fire engines. Some others have been tried, yellow/white but almost all have gone back to red.

[DFC_Member]

Are Rigs have been red and White since 1989 And I do think it makes a diffrence on the traffic.

[CanFyr]

Lime green...orange...white...black ...yellow?

Call me old fashioned, but limes are green, oranges
are orange, snow is white, tar is black, and school
buses are yellow.

Firetrucks are RED. Our dept had yellow for years,
but thankfully smarter heads eventually prevailed,
and we've switched back to RED. I have to think that
25-30 feet of sirens and air horns blaring, and a dozen
or so red lights flashing should be plenty visible. If
they (and we've all encountered "they" a hundred times)
still don't see all the show coming down the road, the
color of the paint won't make much difference at all.

I may be wrong about this, but I gottta go with
tradition: Firetrucks are RED.


www.bramptonfire.com

[UTFFEMT]

We started out with Red, about 13 years ago the City Council decided I think to look different than the sister city around us and we changed to Yellow. About a year ago we have decided to go back to the Red with white striping. So as we replace vehicles they are coming in red but it will be some time before we get all of our fleet red as we get new vehicles. We only have three stations but will still take some time.

All of our Ambulances are now White with red Striping.

To tell you the truth, I have worked on White, red, Yellow, Blue, Green and several combinations of the above and I do not really think it makes a difference with safety. Driving code 3 is just dangerous knowmatter what color of rig you are on.