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.