Yea but the expense goes to the small town that never really needed it. My town has a fancy ladder with a bucket that also only really only gets used for mutual aid for boring surround and drowns but we do have medium sized buildings which is how we justified it
Looks like there is no pump and it’s all just a shitload of storage compartments. The tandem axle was so they could pack every compartment with rescue shit.
Love that rig. It’s not the only one in the country anymore, now that Portland has their tiller squad with a knuckle boom crane and Dallas has a tiller hazmat rig. Think a fourth one came out too, forget where
Most(maybe all) depts with tandem rears on the tractor are set up that way due to weight restrictions from their local DOTs. I've only ever seen them from the pnw. The extra axle also helps with braking in steeper terrain.
Edit-Corrected sloppy punctuation
I think you are correct. The camera angle makes the Henrico Tractor look a little longer, but I think they are the same. Freaking gorgeous trucks. If I remember correctly, a big component for Columbus is the enhanced breaking power of the duel rear axle.
West coast is a common spot for a 3 axle tractor. Weight and PSI restrictions are both factors. In reality, it doesn’t change how much they can carry, as you can get 50k+ lb axles on the driver. Payload will still be the same.
One other sweet spot of having three axles is setting up for two interlocked drive axles with chains for winter. They aren’t fast, but they can climb a wet tree when they’re rigged that way.
“The Henrico Technical Rescue Team was organized in 1990. The original purpose was to be able to respond to unusual rescue situations in Henrico County, particularly those which involve collapsed structures or require extensive rope techniques. The team is now capable of responding to incidents involving confined spaces, high angle rescue (vertical rope operations), low angle rescue (horizontal or near-horizontal rope operations), trench collapse, structure collapse, vehicle extrication, heavy equipment extrication, surface and swift-water rescues or any combination of these.” From their website
At medium to small sized departments the people riding the trucks play a huge factor in what the department buys.
The majority of the departments that have tillers, have no actual need for them. They buy them to buy them, the city of Boston has 0 tillers. That should be pretty telling of how many places actually need them.
I took the liberty of searching arcgis for henrico county. I made the assumption that their first due would have to have some pretty tight roads that would necessitate the tiller. I found that in their 1st due they have to support a motor speed way(richmond raceway) and have multiple tight roads. They are also very near to richmond proper and maybe have it in support of mutual aid. Has to be a reason to purchase and support such an expensive apparatus.
This truck is assigned to the main TRT station, and has a massive Amazon facility in their backyard. They’ve been driving on narrow streets while training the shifts assigned to it, and it’s doing just fine.
Hot take. As more and more departments that don’t need tillers buy them to use as recruiting tools or so they can mimick whatever big city is nearest them, the designs are losing sight of what a TDA should be. Tractors on these things are now the length of full size engines, defeating the purpose of a short wheel base and 5th wheel. Ladder storage is being cast aside for pumps and tanks, tiller cages are getting bigger and cabs taller by adding things like light towers and raised roofs, removing scrub area for the aerial. Because at the end of the day, most places don’t need tiller trucks; they’re just buying them because they can and they’re cool.
They bought that thing to downsize their tractor trailer to a large box truck for their technical rescue team. The tandem axle is for weight. Henrico is also a very rich department.
Just like the Good Ol' Days, when a pumper was assigned to every fire with a truck, to pump for the aerial. The cool thing was you also had extra hands from the engine crew, because engine guys want to be like truckies and break stuff.
With how close Station 1 is the to city it'll probably see some mutual aid use too. I've heard since Richmond lost some federal funding some truck companies will be browned out.
Can confirm it will provide mutual aid response (I work in a neighboring jurisdiction). Henrico is the regional TRT north of the James River, and North/East of RVA just keeps growing.
Fair point. I should have said "their TRT resources respond frequently enough as mutual aid to neighboring jurisdictions because they are the closest capable TRT North of the James and West of the City."
Doubt it tbh, mutual aid between RFD/HDFR has been rocky in the past and to my knowledge hasn't made great improvements and as far as I know there's no auto aid agreement still. I don't work for the city and most of the city guys I hung out with I don't see anymore, so take my words with a grain of salt
Funding they lost was not for the fire Dept. Plus they should be in their final year since they got it in 2022. This year is when they get the least amount of money. I believe it was around $2.7 million. But it had also come out that no safer grant money was affected.
Number 4 is wrong. Our pay falls behind the other depts in the area. We might start out good, but the other depts pass us very quickly. My equal south of the river makes about $18k more a year than I do. Benefits are ok, the other depts are better.
I know. One of the best, I know it's not the top especially when juxtaposed with NoVA, the CField/Henrico pay wars is amusing to watch from the outside looking in 😂. I haven't seen the benefits package in some years but I remember it being beefy. I'll listen to you though, you got the first hand experience:)
I believe the pay war is over, at least on our end. We're back to being told we should be lucky that we have a job, look at the other places that are closing companies. Last time I heard talk like this we went 7 years without a raise. But they increased the starting pay each of those years so it's caused a big compression issue.
I would be happy to go to a county budget meeting to raise hell on y'alls behalf as long as I can get some solid public facing numbers and or talking points for non CIP related expenses.
You know it does happen but the people who do it are generally perceived as Karens and are shamed publicly. The "public" being the common man isn't gonna change this shit. It's when the new fire tax hits a multi million dollar business that said business owner starts making phone calls to his local board members and commissioners, and it's a blink and you'll miss it type of situation where funding gets cut.
All of that being said FD funding is not something that pisses me off or most people off. I sometimes wonder why the local small town PD needs an armored BearCat for their once every 5 years psychiatric call but that's not my call. I don't get shot at at work so meh.
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u/glinks 25d ago
My volunteer department that runs 300 calls a year with no buildings over 40 feet tall does.