The Marlboro (NJ) Volunteer Fire Company serves the residents of Marlboro Township Fire District #1, as well as providing mutual aid to other parts of the township and neighboring towns. The fire company runs two pumpers (a KME and a Marion), a KME 100-foot rear-mount aerial ladder, a rescue, a 3,000-gallon Hahn tanker, a Ford brush truck, a utility pickup, and two chief’s vehicles. The fire company wanted to replace its Hahn tanker and went to Spartan Emergency Response for a new rig.
Ryan Bailey, director of emergency truck sales for Campbell Supply Company, who sold the new rig to Marlboro, says the fire company had a good handle on what it wanted in a new pumper-tanker. “They wanted it on a commercial chassis with a high-horsepower engine, a large amount of water, a large pump, an electrically controlled deck gun, and three dump valves,” Bailey observes. “They have a lot of nonhydranted areas in their coverage district, and they also give mutual aid to surrounding areas that are without hydrants.”
Bailey says that the pumper-tanker Spartan ER built for Marlboro is on a Kenworth T880 two-door cab and chassis and is powered by a 500-horsepower (hp) Cummins engine and an Allison 4,500 EVS automatic transmission. He notes that the rig has a 245-inch wheelbase, an overall length of 35 feet 5 inches, and an overall height of 11 feet 3 inches, with a 20,000-pound rated front axle and a 52,000-pound rear axle.
Marlboro’s pumper-tanker has a 2,000-gallon-per-minute (gpm) Hale Qmax side-mount pump, a 3,500-gallon water tank, a 50-gallon foam tank, and a FoamPro 2002 foam proportioning system. Bailey notes that the rig has a Task Force Tips remote-controlled deck gun with an 18-inch Extend-A-Gun, two foam-capable single stack 200-foot1 ¾-inch crosslays, one foam-capable single stack 200-foot 2½-inch crosslay, and one 200-foot 2½-inch dead lay.
He says the pumper-tanker has three 10-inch Newton dump valves with 18-inch telescoping chutes located at the rear and each side of the truck, 150-feet of foam-capable one-inch hose on a reel in the rear compartment, a 4-inch Elkhart Brass direct tank fill valve and a 4-inch Akron electric-control discharge valve that can both be controlled from the pump panel or the rear of the rig, two 4-inch Akron Brass tank-to-pump valves, and a ¾-inch decon water washdown system.
The pumper-tanker’s hosebed carries 500 feet of 5-inch large diameter hose (LDH) and 500 feet of 2½-inch hose, while a Zico hydraulic portable water tank carrier is on the left side of the rig, and a Zico hydraulic drop-down carrier for three hard suction lengths is on the right side. The truck has a Spartan Smart Access fold-down ladder at the rear.
Marlboro’s pumper tanker has an FRC inView 360 camera system, and lighting on the rig includes a Whelen 60-inch Freedom IV LED lightbar, Whelen M6 and M9 LED warning lights, a HiViz FireTech LED mini brow light, four FRC SpectraMax 12-volt LED scene lights (two on each side of the rig), two HiViz FireTech Guardian Elite LED lights at the rear, and a Whelen 36-inch-wide LED directional lightbar at the rear.
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.
