?? about keyless ignition

[fieldseng2]

My youngest brother is a sales rep for a trucking company in Illinois that occasionally deals with fire departments.

Currently he is working with an FD that wants a medium duty truck w/a 2500 gallon tank.

He believes there might be an NFPA standard or some kind of requirement that trucks have to have a keyless ignition, but the agency he is dealing with wants to work around that.

Anybody got any ideas on the answer to this??

thanks,

fieldseng2

[Dave1983]

Never heard of any such standard. Many departments around here (including mine) use Freightliner chassis for different types of apparatus and they all have keyed ignitions. So if such a standard is out there, its brand new.

[MalahatTwo7]

I agree with Dave here. Most trucks over 20,000gvw have what might be termed as keyless ignition, if you determine that the key to open the ignition is independant to the "push-to-start" button, and battery lock-out switch.

[fieldseng2]

I haven't heard of this either, but I thought I'd ask around.

[KEEPBACK200FEET]

Refer to NFPA Standard 1901. If it is a standard, it will be listed there.

[lvwrench]

Don't know of or never heard or read of anything in the NFPA standards regarding a must be keyless ignition but for us here it is keyless except for the rescues. I'd hate to hear of a fire call and nobody knows where the key is because of security or out of habit somebody had the key but nobody knows who or the other shift forgot to leave it. Of course we could make numerous sets of keys. How about if on scene somebody accidently locked the door with engine running.

[RFDACM]

I recall being told the ignition key or mechanism could not be disabled by some means that would render the appratus out of service. Hence many older commercial apparatus that have keys, have them chained to the dash. No chance of personnel leaving the station with the key in their pockets. Don't laugh, I personally have done this with an ambulance when I was on a volunteer service. It is natural to take the key out when you exit the vehicle. Pretty much gaurantee you better go on the next call if your holding the keys. Now, in my FT dept. I've haven't seen this happen ever and we run three ALS ambulances with removable keys. But none of the fire apparatus have keys.

[fieldseng2]

I agree with you guys. Just thought I'd toss the idea around here. In fact, I'm not sure if I've ever worked on a piece that had a regular key.

Thanks guys.