Fire Engines Photos

These were always on a 4X4 chassis, but limited to 7.5 tons GVW so they could be operated without a HGV license. The other - probably even more popular - chassis was the Mercedes Unimog. They were issued to small volunteer fire companies, while the larger and more comprehensive RW 2 and 3 versions mainly found their way to larger towns and full time city brigades. With the introduction of rescue pumpers, they became superfluous and gradually died out. As illustrated by this example, this often took quite a long time!

Added by Rob Johnson on 20 November 2025.

Because of the 4X4 chassis with its high ground clearance the upper lockers were actually quite hard to reach. For this reason the lower locker cover section was a folding step, so crew members could use this to more easily get at items stored on the top shelf.
This soon became a feature of most German appliances, enabling more storage to be added. Their full height lockers were made accessible by the same method of making the lower locker cover a fold out step. The idea of adding a folding step to the rear wheel arch surround was an additional later evolution, which made the locker over the wheel arch also more easy to reach into.

Added by Rob Johnson on 21 November 2025.

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