fire trucks running high speed on Laguna Seca

Fire departments across the U.S. and Canada are waiting years — sometimes four and a half — for new fire trucks, and paying double or triple what those trucks cost five years ago. What is the cause?

just three manufacturers control more than 70% of the market

wait times that once ran about 18 months now stretch up to four and a half years.

https://www.iaff.org/news/what-to-know-about-the-fire-truck-crisis

odd coincidence, two vehicles with the number 43 showing up at the gas station at the same time

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10163955174211893&set=pcb.26595882616773715

I went out to El Centro to get a magazine collection for Steve... and dang it, the guy has these in his back yard!

The guy's hobby is fixing up fire trucks and ambulances and selling them! 

1929 Bentley 4 1/2 litre. Probably the fastest fire engine in England during WW2. In use with the City of Chichester Auxiliary Fire Service

 https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/127/

1939 GMC /Hunter, it sat in a junkyard for 50 years before getting rescued

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1393436049236203&set=pcb.1425981462226424

Western Electric had it's own fire department

https://chicagoareafire.com/blog/2012/10/western-electric-fire-department-in-cicero-il/

John William "Jack" Ryan, was Mattel VP and chief designer until 1977, created Barbie, had about a 1,000 patents, and drove a 1935 Reo fire engine around Bel Air!

He built a bizarre faux castle with drawbridge and moat in Bel Air, where he had a dozen college students trading room and board for estate grounds upkeep/party waiters, etc - and so he installed 144 telephones throughout The Castle and grounds. 

The entire phone system was switched through a highly sophisticated communications system that he bought as surplus from a U.S. Navy destroyer and reengineered.

For a short while, he held 300 parties a year

He had a 18 car collection, and owned a vintage 1935 REO fire engine that he would load with party guests and drive around town, and to the Playboy Club where their respective social secretaries arranged a meet and greet, resulting in Hefner and Ryan teaming up for charity events around Hollywood/Beverly Hills/LA

Ryan went to Yale College, where he was active in the Pistol Club, and the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He served in the Pacific for a short time during World War II and in 1946 returned to Yale, where he was known as an “engineering genius.”

With a degree from Yale and having studied at Harvard, Jack worked for Raytheon during the early 50s / Cold War, helping to design the ground-to-air Hawk missile and the air-to-air Sparrow III missile, both of which were ordered by the Pentagon.

In 1955, Ryan joined Mattel, by getting a deal where he got 1.5% of the gross on all the toys he designed for them.

Even though he was never an employee of Mattel, he was their head of R&D. Not only did he do the mechanical design of the toys, he studied how children interacted with them. That’s because he was a real engineer, not just a tinkerer, and that means being systematic. He set up play areas with prototypes and had psychologists evaluate them. This became another reason for Mattel’s success.

Jack invented the Hot Wheels car suspension, the bearings, and the plastic wheels. Unlike Matchbox, Ryan put plastic wheels on the cars with a little give for traction and needle bearings for smooth motion

He also came out with the orange track system that let kids build raceways, and invented the battery-powered accelerator (the Supercharger) that would shove the cars along. Mattel sold six billion Hot Wheels cars in their first 50 years, from 1968 to 2018.

He devised a coffee cup that would keep beverages at a constant temperature (probably using a phase change of sodium acetate), and a camera that could develop its own film.

Ryan later engineered the voice mechanism for Chatty Cathy, the first mass-produced talking doll, revolutionizing interactive play for children. He invented the rocking horse with moving legs. He also helped create Hot Wheels, applying automotive and aerospace engineering to design miniature cars with unprecedented speed, style, and performance.

His ideas on blending technical precision with imaginative play were later preserved by Stanford University, where his "Design Philosophy" is archived.

Evidence of his "space-aged savvy" can be seen in the designs of many of the toys he created for the Mattel line. For instance, the V-RROOM! X-15 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/09/did-you-ever-hear-of-this-mattel-x-15.html which was named after the North American X-15 rocket-powered aircraft that were made for the USAF, the NASA, and the USN. 

His name also appears on the patent documents of the V-RROOM! bicycles of the 1960s as well as the V-RROOM! toy engines that simulated real motorcycle engine sounds.

He married Zsa Zsa Gabor for a year, 75-76, but near the divorce, disassembled her Rolls-Royce in attempt to make her a custom limousine and, according to court records, refused to put it back together again.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/04/barbie-creator-jack-ryan-once-held-his-own-daughters-hostage/
https://www.facebook.com/DreamHouseJackRyan/posts/i-asked-chatgpt-for-help-what-do-you-think/1074045853936982/

https://babelniche.com/2024/06/05/obscure-creators-of-the-world-3-jack-ryan/

https://medium.com/@solidi/jack-ryan-and-ruth-handler-of-mattel-the-power-ballad-of-american-coffee-2c19994e6732

https://timenote.info/en/Jack-Ryan-12.11.1926#google_vignette

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ryan-john-william-jack

https://catalogimages.wiley.com/images/db/pdf/9780470371268.excerpt.pdf

This post took 3 hours just to track down every lead online to find the make and model of the fire engine, all the rest of the information was found only as a side effect of looking for the fire engine

loving this snowmobile in disguise, with a rear steer independent operator just like the long ladder trucks

from the videos of Levi LaVallee, famous snow mobile stunt guy

Fire Engine 30, belonging to the San Diego Fire Department's Station 30, was stolen Saturday afternoon and found more than 60 miles away.

The engine was taken at around 4:30 p.m. near 16th Street and Palm Avenue and found just after 5:10 p.m. more than 60 miles away, all the way in Fallbrook.

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdfd-fire-engine-stolen-driven-fallbrook/3917782/

41 Ford model 85 fire truck in the Iron County Museum (thanks Niki!)

cool '38 firetruck that has remained in San Diego, it was a lifeguard station rescue truck.. I can't figure out why the drivers side and passenger side rims have different pinstriping

Ever see a wallplate and electric outlets on a hood before? Me neither

 

FOMOCO fire extinguisher! I've never heard that Ford made these

now and then I get to get into a fire dept while on the job. Yesterday I was in two, and both had display cases of museum pieces

I never heard of a Plectron before! 

and I never heard of a "Disposable Obstetrical Kit" 

the North Adams Fired Dept still has their 1944 Mack! Wow! Thanks Tom!

 

The pumper joined the Fire Department in 1941 and served the city for nearly 40 years. 

The vintage fire truck was retained as a source of pride by the department, but at more than 60 years old, the Mack was definitely showing its age. Firefighters, students, volunteers and more than a dozen businesses stepped up to keep the pumper going.

The major body work was done at T&M Auto on Curran Highway, where the truck was parked on Thursday morning.

"We got it in this spring, and put a ton of work in - body work and painting," said T&M owner Michael Milazzo, who estimated at least 500 hours were spent on the truck just this year.   "We've been discussing this project since '04 but it took it this long," Milazzo said, adding later that "we have a great community and there are a lot of people who don't realize how strong the community is."

In addition to work done by McCann students and Milazzo, a host of other businesses gave services, time and materials - from Dean's Quality Auto tuning the engine and rebuilding the exhaust to Sanford & Kid providing interior upholstery.

Meranti said firefighters spent many hours repairing and rebuilding parts of the truck and he and his sons, Mitchell and Matthew, rewired the vehicle.

Mack Manufacturing in Allentown, Pa., delivered the brand-new pumper to Fire Chief John F. Saulnier in November 1941 and put into service after passing a "rigorous three-hour test" at the Briggsville Dam, according to reports at the time by the North Adams Transcript. It was ordered through the former Brewer Bros. dealership at a cost of $10,000. At the time, the Mack company said it was only of only five enclosed-cab firetrucks in the state

They restored it in 2012

https://firenews.org/mass/n/northadams/northadams.html
https://www.iberkshires.com/story/42111/north-adams-restores-1941-fire-engine.html

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a cool high school let the kids work on a fire engine!

 

great Jeep fire engine!

that tach looks very familiar... it took me some time to look up tachs, and get the brand, it's a Sun