How Many Have Apparatus Nicknames?

[joejoe33]

How many of your departments or organizations have apparatus with nicknames lettered on the apparatus? And what are the nicknames?

[Driver76]

Jackson Hose No. 3 in Nyack, NY has "GREEN HORNET" written over the windshield of their Kelly green and gold Hahn pumper.

It matches the green leather helmets they wear


-bob-

[Dave1105]

There is a spare pumper in my region that is the old 2nd pumper from one of the busy inner-suburbian stations..... Was involved in an accident and unfortunately, killed the occupant of the car it hit..... That trucks nickname is Christine..... not sure why ;-)

[MemphisE34a]

Ours is affectionately know as "A piece of crap"

Lt. Robert Kramer
Engine Co. 34-A
Memphis Fire Department

[firefighterbeau]

Well we don't have any of the names on the trucks with decals, but we had a truck called the 6 pack, and then we have one named the orange truck. Other than that they all have a unit number.

[npfd801]

I'm with the Lt.

I'd get booted off the boards if I used the nicknames for our particular engine, especially if we're going south out of the station. I've had people using walkers flipping me the bird because we were holding them up going up the hill...

The guys with the newest engine have called their's the Pride of the department, but since they tore half of the driver's side apparatus body off the other day, I'm not sure that name will stick either.

[mglax13]

We have "The Workhorse Company" on all of our apparatus along with our logo. Our 1991 E-One 103' Bronto has a nick name. It's called "Out Of Service". Well, that's what the sign stuck to it all the time says...we usually just refer to it as "Flamaing Piece of S***" though.

[Fire1839]

We had a old truck it was 1949 military surplus truck we put a bars on it sort of like the brush truck below that we called Old Raggity...The name came about when there was a forest fire in our area. the state forest fire service came out with their small power wagon type brush trucks and couldn't make it thru the thick brush towards the fire so we entered into the woods with a version of this truck and they made and comment "what are you gonna do with that old raggity truck"...well to make long story short we made it thru and chased down the the head fire with that truck...

[Dave1983]

We call ours Engine, Truck & Squad

Nicknames for rigs doesnt seem to be popular in my area. The only one I know of is a local department that calls one of its reserve engines "Little Squirt" cause it has a real short wheelbase.

Cool idea, maybe Ill bring up the idea at the next union meeting.

Dave

[dmleblanc]

Where I work we used to have a '75 engine made by Luverne, so it was just called "the Luverne"....then some smart alec named the other engine "Shirley". Shirley was gone when I arrived, but there was a ladder truck purchased in '80 or so, and it was called "Squiggy" (there was a decal on the front bumper that said "Squiggy") I guess if Laverne & Shirley had stayed on the air longer we probably would have continued that theme...thank goodness that didn't happen...

In my volly department we have a "Sparky" (with a little dalmatian painted on the sides, now retired, though) and "Smokey", a 1970 Darley still in service at one of our substations. "Smokey" has a painting of Smokey the Bear on both sides on the compartment doors.

We also have an '80 Pierce mini-pumper with "Quick Attack" painted on both front fenders....don't know if that really qualifies as a nickname....

[sdff1520]

we have one that we call P.O.S.

[ameryfd]

Officially all ours have unit numbers, but we have small decals on two of them..... We have a tanker named "Big Ben", that was named in honor of a former chief who died, then we have our Polaris Ranger ATV which we call "Squirt" cuz it has a 30 gallon tank and uses a garden hose...

[hwoods]

Our 2004 Pierce has "Blitz Crew" over top of the windshield. Although not lettered, other apparatus have nicknames too, the 1992 Seagrave Tower Ladder is "The White Whale" (Color and size) or "The Lead Sled" (Speed or lack thereof) The Squad is sometimes referred to as "The Big Yellow Toolbox" and, although lettered "Rescue Wagon", the Rescue Engine has Lots of Names, none suitable for a Family thread. We've been known as "The Blitz Crew" since we worked on creating an operation where we would show up and drown the Fire, instantly, back in the mid 60s. Some of our Apparatus of that time was, well, different. 1.5 hose on reels, An all wheel drive engine with 3.5 supply line, 3 master stream devices, and a 3.0 preconnect attack line were among our inventions. I actually pulled up to a small building that was well involved, hit it with 2 deck gun streams from the tank, and the damn thing fell over. The 4X4 was an International Conventional 4 door cab, and our first Yellow unit. It quickly became "The State Roads Truck" since MdDoT had a big bunch of them. Our best was "Tower Power" on the 1970 Sutphen 95' Tower Ladder. On a lot of Fires, we would run the Bucket into the building at ground level (loading dock door, or take out big windows) and walk it in with both guns flowing as much as we could push thru it. Fires would go out. Quickly.

[CaptOldTimer]

Originally posted by MemphisE34a
Ours is affectionately know as "A piece of crap"

Lt. Robert Kramer
Engine Co. 34-A
Memphis Fire Department

Must be a E-ONE!!!!!!!

As long as you are forced to buy E-Ones you will have a peice of crap to work with.

[coldfront]

We have one we CALL a{tow truck}for alot!It,s a Pierce pulling a KME.

[5pts384]

Big Red a pumper that has a 2000 gal tank.
Little Red a pumper that has a 1200 gal tank.
We did have a "granny" a 1951 bruco. That we traded for Little Red a 1972 GMC.

[ullrichk]

Our vacuum tanker - essentially the same critter used to clean out septic tanks - is occasionally referred to as The Suck Truck.

(It actually is quite nice.)

[Engine7Cadet]

Well currently my department is waiting for the arrival of our new tower ladder, and a neighboring town gave us their reserve aerial...well the aerial ladder didnt pass the ladder tests and is out of service, the truck is rusted and everything, the reverse horn sounds like a dieing animal, etc....so we put a sign in the cab thats hanging which reads "Rent-A-Wreck".

Our regular truck with a Aerial which is a beautiful recent truck has a sign thats mounted to the frame on the back bumper which reads "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap".

My Engine Company has a sign on the side in one of the windows that says "2nd To None" and we call ourselves "Elite Engine Company Seven" and that is put on all our paperwork, rosters, and everything we submit for the most part.

[Weruj1]

http://cms.firehouse.com/forums2/sho...pparatus+names

[MattyJ]

Altough all these nicknames dont do too much for me, I found this pretty funny. I remember a story about a Brooklyn truck that had "Nobody does it better" written on their tower ladder boom. So a nearby truck they run in with alot, wrote on their rig.."we're nobody" I forget the companies, but pretty funny.