The quint, which has been around nearly 100 years, is a veritable Swiss Army knife, with a do-it-all configuration that has been popular with many departments for decades.

Quints gained popularity in the thirties and forties, with manufactures like American LaFrance and Seagrave pumping them out by the dozens. Quints made a resurgence in the eighties, with big departments, such as the one serving St. Louis, standardizing their fleets with quints as first-line apparatus.

Quints have become popular with departments once again, especially those facing budget and staffing cuts in these challenging economic times.

Quint Primer

According to NFPA 1901, Automotive Fire Apparatus, a quint is a fire apparatus with a permanently mounted fire pump, a water tank, a hose storage area, an aerial ladder or elevated platform with a permanently mounted waterway and a complement of ground ladders — five basic elements that gave the rig its name.

One name that has become almost synonymous with quints is Neil Svetanics, the former chief of the St. Louis Fire Department. In 1987, Svetanics standardized all the apparatus in the city as quints. In 1999, he ordered 34 new quints, replacing the city's fleet.

Svetanics' rationale for his unconventional thinking was really pretty simple.

“The city was experiencing reduced budgets and I was trying to do more with less while still providing the city with the fire service they had come to expect,” said Svetanics, who is now the chief of the Lemay Fire Protection District, just outside of St. Louis.

Svetanics remains a proponent of quints and says they just make sense on so many different levels.

“Even if you don't have money or manpower issues, it just makes sense to have an aerial right there in front of the building,” he said.

Bob Barraclough, a fire apparatus expert from Plano, Texas, who recently marked his 50th year in the fire service, also is a proponent of quints.

“The 75-foot, single-axle quint is the most popular ladder on sale today,” said Barraclough, who is a frequent lecturer at symposiums and conferences nationwide, and is a member of the NFPA 1901 committee on apparatus. “The 75-foot quint is very accommodating. It fits on narrow streets and helps reach setbacks.”

Quints are now much smaller than they once were, Barraclough said. There was a day when they were tandem-axle behemoths — heavy and big. Today's 75-foot quints are compact with short wheelbases, which makes them far more manageable.

Even though quints have become much smaller, Svetanics said he's noticed they've also become much more stable than previous incarnations.

“The biggest advancement is in stability and they've increased the reach as well,” he said.

The technology that goes into them also has improved, with better electrical systems, braking power and drive-train components.

Although it's hardly a new development, Svetanics said the introduction of diesel engines in quints made it possible to replace multiple-stage pumps with single-stage pumps. Multiple-stage pumps were often needed on aerials to overcome friction loss in elevated master streams. Diesel engines develop more horsepower and torque than gasoline engines so single-stage pumps now work much better for aerials.

“The diesel engines also require less maintenance,” Svetanics said.

New Options

A more recent development is an all-wheel drive configuration for quints.

John Witt, the president and CEO of Safetek Emergency Vehicles in Abbotsford, B.C., Canada, recently sold two 4×4 quints to Whistler (B.C.) Fire Rescue — the first of their kind.

Witt said that both trucks will be built by Smeal Fire Apparatus on the new Spartan Gladiator 4×4 low-profile cab with 5-inch raised roofs.

The trucks will be in service in time for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Witt said.

“They needed them to be all-wheel-drive to get around in the snow,” Witt said. “Rear-wheel drive just wouldn't do what they wanted.”

While not unique, all-wheel drive quints are rare, with only a handful sprinkled across North America, according to Witt, who said Whistler's will be the first built on the low-profile cab.

“The advantage of that is they won't need steps to get in,” Witt said.

More and more fire departments in Canada are moving to quints for their aerial needs, according to Witt.

“I would say that 99% of the aerials I sell have pumps on them,” Witt said, adding that some big cities in Canada, including Toronto and Edmonton, rely heavily on quints. “Quints have everything. They have aerials for master streams and rescue and they have pumps for fire suppression.”

All-wheel drive is not the only innovative feature Smeal has recently integrated into its quints.

The company now has a feature called Ergonomic Hose Load, which is designed to keep firefighters off the tops of trucks. The device is a chute that slides out from the back of the apparatus at torso height, which makes it easier to load hose on the apparatus.

“It works on a hydraulic system and it makes hose loading a piece of cake,” Barraclough said.

Guarded Praise

While quints certainly have their fans, some people are a little more circumspect in their praise of quints. One of those people is Don Frazeur, chairman of the NFPA 1901 committee and assistant fire chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

“Quints definitely have a place in the fire service,” Frazeur said. “They are not the cure-all that some people think they are. You are going to have to be very careful in your approach to using a quint. It's not the end all apparatus that does everything. You are going to have to make choices.”

Frazeur said that for his money, he'd rather buy two pieces of apparatus, a pumper and an aerial.

“Labor is the most expensive item in a department's budget,” Frazeur said. “By comparison, apparatus is relatively inexpensive.”

Following that logic, Frazeur said it's better to get an aerial that will do everything an aerial should, and a pumper that will support that expensive piece of equipment and do everything a pumper should.

Frazeur acknowledged that St. Louis is a perfect example of where the quints worked and, in his mind, that has at least a bit to do with topography. St. Louis is relatively flat, while many places in California are hilly, Frazeur said. That means the braking systems on quints, which often are much heavier than regular pumpers, would get a workout, he said. One way around that is to have an engine brake and a transmission brake working in tandem on apparatus to slow and stop it, Frazeur said, noting he has seen some aerials employ both.

For Svetanics' money, the quint still offers the best bang for the buck. It allows fire departments to have an aerial device and a pumper combined in one and to operate it with one four-person crew, he said, rather than having crews diluted by two or more apparatus.

“A fire truck with a crew of less than four men is unsafe at any speed,” he said.

Witt said firefighters who want to specialize as “truckies” running the aerial only, or who only want to do fire suppression and interior work, would have to find other departments in which to serve.

“In a perfect world, cities would be able to have firefighters do only the work they want to do, but today they have to work smarter.”

Svetanics knows quints have their critics, but he has a bit of advice: “If you want it to work, it will work and work well.”

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Ed Ballam is a freelance writer.

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