Fire Engines Photos

Crown was actually much more famous for their enormous production of coaches and school buses, although they did manufacture a wide variety of both custom and commercial apparatus for many West Coast fire departments.

The Ford C chassis was also an extremely popular fire engine chassis, used by numerous builders all over the country for virtually every application imaginable during its lengthy production run from 1957 to 1990. It was available with powerful Cat optional engines, had a tilt cab, was much less costly than a custom job, and both servicing and parts availability were good - as a result of the huge numbers being sold in the commercial market.

They were deployed in large numbers by major city departments including Dallas, Houston, Boston, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as by medium sized cities and hundreds of cash-strapped small town volunteer fire companies too.

Many had canopy tilting crew cabs for six riders, while others like this example simply used the factory cab...

The 50 foot squirt lost popularity over the years, due to its limited reach. Those that were replaced were often supplanted by the rather more useful 75 foot quint.

Added by Rob Johnson on 27 October 2018.

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