The Belton, Missouri Fire Department was looking to purchase a 2,000-gallon tanker with a relatively small footprint because it didn’t want an oversized vehicle. After researching several tanker makers, Belton chose to go with Danko Emergency Equipment to build a pumper-tanker with 50% more water than they were first seeking, yet with a manageable overall length and height.
The fire department protects the city of 20,000 people, and also contracts to protect an adjoining rural area bringing its total protection area to 33 square miles. John Sapp, Belton’s fire chief, says the district is a mix of single family and multi-family residences, commercial structures, and some light industrial businesses. “The department has 54 employees, 48 of whom are paid full-time firefighters,” Sapp points out. “We have two stations that house our new pumper-tanker, a Precision pumper, a Pierce 107-foot Ascendant aerial ladder, two brush trucks, three ambulances, a battalion chief, and a reserve pumper.”
Sapp notes that Belton Fire had not dealt with Danko before, but after they checked out a demo pumper-tanker Danko had built, decided to sit down and talk with them about building a rig for Belton. “At first we started talking about a pumper-tanker with a 2,000-gallon water tank,” Sapp says, “but the Danko people showed us how we could get a 1,000-gallon per minute (gpm) pump and a 3,000-gallon tank on a tandem rear axle vehicle that would be only slightly longer than a 2,000-gallon model.”
Steve Borts, Danko sales representative who sold the pumper-tanker to Belton, says the rig is built on a Freightliner M2 106 chassis and two-person cab, with a 220-inch aluminum body, a 194 inch wheelbase, a 29 foot 5 inch overall length, and a 9 foot 8 inch overall height. He adds that the pumper-tanker is powered by a 360-horsepower (hp) Cummins engine, and an Allison 3000 EVS automatic transmission.
Borts says the pumper-tanker has a Hale MBP Side Kick™ 1,000-gpm power takeoff (PTO) pump, a 3,000-gallon polypropylene water tank, two half-cross lays in trays that slide on rails and hold 200 feet of 1-3/4-inch hose each, and a Newton 10-inch stainless steel dump valve with a swiveling extension at the rear of the rig.
Dave Knobbe, Danko’s apparatus sales manager, says the Belton pumper-tanker has a Task Force Tips ball intake valve on the 6-inch intake, LED water level display gauges on each side at the rear of the rig, a 3,000-gallon portable water tank in a Zico tip-down hydraulic carrier on the driver’s side, and a pumper’s complement of ground ladders on open racks on the officer’s side.
“They also are carrying self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) air packs in the L3 and R3 compartments, have storage for four SCBA bottles in the rear wheel wells, and a slide out toolboard for fittings in the L1 compartment alongside the pump panel,” Knobbe says. “All compartments are covered by ROM roll-up doors, and we also built a custom bracket at the rear of the truck to hold a strainer attached to the hard suction so firefighters can quickly deploy it for drafting.”
Lighting on the pumper-tanker includes Whelen LED red and blue warning lighting, a Whelen Freedom IV LED lightbar, Whelen Pioneer LED scene lights, and a Whelen LED traffic advisor.
ALAN M. PETRILLO is a Tucson, Arizona-based journalist, the author of three novels and five nonfiction books, and a member of the Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment Editorial Advisory Board. He served 22 years with the Verdoy (NY) Fire Department, including in the position of chief.
