Brat

[haven]

Fire departments and the Forest Service need apparatus for fighting fires in off-pavement situations. One solution is the "brush truck," a medium duty 4x4 that can carry a small crew and gear

Firematic is an East Coast company that equips and sells fire trucks. Their brush truck is called the BRAT (Brush Rapid Attack truck). Here's one example

Most BRATs are F350 or F550, but their web site shows one F650 4x4 with 22.5 inch single rear wheels

Firematic sells equipment that allows you to convert your truck for off-road service. For example, they make an interesting exo-rollcage

Read more about Firematic here

http://www.firematic.com/brat.htm

Do you know about other companies that modify medium duty 4x4 trucks for use by fire departments, ambulance companies, oil service crews, and so on?

Chip Haven

 

[Lynn]

Heh... not the Brat I was thinking about... but I guess those wouldn't be in "Domestic" either

I get the impression that most fire trucks etc are just heavy... heavy with a bunch of capital letters and italics even. Is that well translated to off-highway service?

You haven't seen the camper I'm wanting to build.

 

[Haggis]

While not a new truck, we owned, for our lumber business, a '71 Chevy with the Napco 4x4 conversion. It was a firefighting brush truck built for the Cooperstown Fire Dept. back in '72 and was used sparingly over the next 30 years. When we got it it had 28,000 miles on it and was as clean as a whistle. It got auctioned of with the rest of the equipment when we sold the mill back in '05. It was a brute and other than hauling stuff it really wasn't anywhere near a practical expo rig. Big turning radius, awful gas consumption, and with the 5.13 gears it was not the fastest thing off the line. But it was one cool looking rig. Sorry no pics of it, I never thought of taking one since it was just a work truck