Fire Engines Photos

At this time Volvos were very popular with numerous brigades in the UK, not least London! But in later years they gradually declined in popularity and are now used by only a small number of brigades, led by Greater Manchester. Any comments?

Added by Rob Johnson on 19 April 2023.

Rob, really? Virtually all West Yorkshire’s appliances are Volvo. Similarly North Yorkshire. Together with Greater Manchester that’s a big chunk of Northern England, and I’m sure many more brigades further afield use them.

Added by Steve on 24 April 2023.

Glad to hear it! I worked for Volvo in the UK many years ago and was very pleased to see them in a load of fire service fleets back then, but I am not up to speed about what is happening there nowadays. It just seemed to me that there are a lot more MAN and Scanias around in fleets that were once Volvo, not to mention London's twenty years of Mercedes.

Added by Rob Johnson on 25 April 2023.

Cumbria have a lot of Volvos and Lancs are rumoured to have ordered some.


Added by Neal Glover on 25 April 2023.

Hi Rob, on a quick calculation around 18 English Brigades have Volvo Pumping appliances as against 21 Scania. All 3 Welsh brigades have Volvo in their fleet and there are some in parts of Scotland. Neal interesting what you say about Lancs. I saw a picture on Emergency one twitter site of a Scania badged up for Cumbria.

Added by John Humphreys on 27 April 2023.

John, thanks. This amounts to around one third or more of UK FRS, which is certainly more than I thought, but still a bit lower than in Volvo’s halcyon days when we had around 50% of annual deliveries with the very popular FL series.

Perhaps some buyers of MAN and Scania are switching back to Volvo. They are certainly still very popular in many other countries, not least Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland. And both India and Chine have bought tons of Brontos on Volvo chassis, too.

Added by Rob Johnson on 27 April 2023.

I had heard a rumour Cumbria had downgraded to Scania, they always look rather cumbersome compared to Volvos.

Added by Neal Glover on 27 April 2023.

Neal - Oddly enough they are far more popular in their native Sweden than Volvos, and Scanias are turning up in increasing numbers in Germany, which is a very large and extremely competitive market with MAN, Mercedes and Magirus-Iveco all on the home market and all very well established. There may be a few Volvo fire appliances there, but I have never seen or heard about a single one!

Added by Rob Johnson on 29 April 2023.

I worked for Excalibur as the development engineer responsible for the electrical systems and also air and hydraulic systems all the appliances they produces including the first Bedford for Powys until they finally ceased production about 19 years ago.

Added by Steve Dutton on 16 May 2024.

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