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A new fire apparatus owned by a local fire chief can help fire districts save an extensive amount of money, time and much more. 
The Draft Commander Mobile Fire Pump is only the 17th unit made by Weis Fire & Safety Equipment Company Inc. of Salina, Kan. and is now owned by North East Fire Chief Bob Franklin.
Franklin said he purchased the unit through his own company, Farco Fire Apparatus Repair Co. Total cost of the equipment, trailer and a new truck to haul the machine came to $97,000.
The apparatus will test up to a 2,500-gallon fire truck tank, Franklin said.
“There are a lot of reasons why this piece of equipment is great for the fire departments in Arkansas to use,” Franklin said. “I have a schedule full of visits to different fire departments throughout October, and I’m sure there will be more places added soon.”
The machine is used by a fire company to ensure that its pump hoses spray water efficiently and effectively. The best thing about the machine, Franklin said, is that it can be taken directly to the station in need.
“Usually a fire station will have to take its fire truck out to a lake or large pond to test the pumper and hoses,” he said. “Oftentimes that means the fire trucks are taken out of the district and they have to do it one truck at a time. That can be bad if there is an emergency within the district.”
Another great aspect of the machine, Franklin said, is that all the water used is recycled, leaving no waste. He said after pulling the equipment into a fire station, a fire truck will connect water hoses to the machine. Franklin said up to 3,000 gallons of water can be pumped into the machine, which will test how much pressure, gallons per minute and vacuum suction a fire truck uses.
“Usually when a fire department tests the equipment, they have to spray the water into a large body of water,” Franklin said. “A fire department also runs the risk of sucking up debris when they use that process. With this machine, we are using the same clear water over and over.”
Franklin explained that not only is the water recycled, but the water exiting the fire truck is returned to the fire truck. Though he charges either $265 or $365 for a fire station to use the equipment, he said it will actually save a fire district in fuel and water usage.
On Friday, the Bauxite fire department learned this firsthand by becoming the third unit in Arkansas that Franklin visited. He said fire departments previously visited are Calico Rock and Delight.
“I know at Calico Rock they used to have to travel 30 miles one way to test a fire truck,” Franklin said. “They could only take one truck at a time, which was out of the city limits, and then it takes at least an hour to test that fire truck. Add in the drive time for each truck and it took all day to test all the fire trucks. Now with this machine, I was able to test all four of their fire trucks at their fire station.”
Bauxite Fire Chief John Davis said his department previously tested its fire trucks between 12 to 15 miles down the road at a large pond in Sardis, which is also out of the fire district.
He said when a department has fire trucks that might get only 10 miles to the gallon, using the type of testing equipment Franklin has can result in a tremendous savings, particularly since no water is wasted. Davis added that at around $150 per thousand gallons of water, the Bauxite fire district will save thousands of dollars.
“I was amazed when [Chief Franklin] pulled this machine up,” Davis said. “We used to have to connect to a hydrant and draw around 60,000 gallons of water, and a lot of that would be sprayed into the big pond in Sardis. Now, of course, we keep the water in the tank.
“Also, we are no longer putting that much wear and tear on the fire trucks driving them back and forth out of the district,” Davis added. “And if there is an emergency, we are right here at the facility. Also, when you drive the fire trucks back and forth, you run the risk of getting into an accident as well.”
Davis said it also takes time to wind up the fire hoses when testing the pumps at a large body of water.
“With this machine, we can just drop everything and go,” he said.
Franklin said the with this machine and through training, it would be possible for a district to lower its Insurance Services Office rating. The ISO rating is the benchmark for determining a fire station’s insurance rates. The lower the ISO rating, the lower the insurance rates, Davis said.
He noted that Bauxite has a ISO rating of seven.
“It will make a big difference for the citizens if we lower our rating,” he said. “We will have an ISO evaluation at the end of the year and because we can test all of our equipment on site, with training and other factors, we have a possibility of being able to lower the rating.”
For more information about Franklin’s Draft Commander Mobile Fire Pump, call him at 847-9199.
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