This gorgeous old girl belongs to the Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Dept., Larimer County Colorado. Our response area is huge; it's a one-hour drive at code 3 (lights and siren) from our east border to our west border. Therefore we have 5 stations....none are manned. The old girl resides at DanF's house since we don't have a "physical" station way up here on the west border of our area.
She's a 1967 Jeep M-715 cargo truck with 38K miles on her. 4WD with high and low range -- and low range is REALLY LOW. She runs a 232 Tornado engine, and was converted to 12v from 24v in the early 1970s. She is outfitted with a modern BB4 fire pump, 250 gallon water tank, booster line reel, and full complement of hose line and tools. RCVFD built the pump system, and it is designed to drain back for winter use -- she can be fully drained and winterized in under 15 minutes, and can draft up a full tank of water again in about 10 minutes. She was originally owned by Larimer County Search and Rescue, and they gave her the nicely-fabricated metal cab and utility bed to replace the old cloth top and flatbed.
She is registered with the county as a Type 6X wildland engine, Rist Canyon Engine 651. She's lovingly referred to as our "slow response pumper" -- she doesn't move very fast, the "Armstrong" power steering gives the driver an upper-body workout, and she will rattle your bones on a rough road, but she also can travel to remote areas where our more modern trucks (like Ford F-550s) fear to tread.
She's one of 3 Jeep M-715s in active service with our department, and she's the only one of the 3 that's classified as a "first out" engine--so she rolls on all fire, medical and rescue calls in our Area 5.
