The Wylie (TX) Fire Rescue has been running quints as first-due rigs since 1995, providing fire suppression, rescue, special operations, and advanced life support (ALS) emergency medical service (EMS) for the 50 square miles of the city of Wylie and an additional 20 square miles in portions of two neighboring counties. The department has a quint in each of its four stations with daily staffing of 25 firefighters out of Wylie’s 84 full-time career firefighters. In addition to the quints, Wylie also has a Ford F-550 rescue truck, an air/light utility truck, and a hazmat response trailer.
“Our first quint was a 1995 E-ONE, and our second one was a 1999 General Safety quint,” says Chief Brandon Blythe. “In 2006 and 2007, we bought Rosenbauer 65-foot and 75-foot quints; in 2013 we got two Rosenbauer 68-foot Roadrunner quints; in 2019 we bought a Rosenbauer 109-foot Viper aerial ladder quint; and in 2021 we added our fourth station and got a Rosenbauer 68-foot Roadrunner quint to put in it.” Blythe adds that the department’s two new Rosenbauer 68-foot Roadrunner quints replace the 2007 and 2013 rigs, with one 2013 quint being held as a reserve vehicle.
Ken Southard, apparatus sales manager for Daco Fire Equipment, who sold the two Roadrunners to Wylie, says the quints are built on a Commander cabs and chassis with Hendrickson parabolic front axles and Meritor air ride rear axles, and are powered by 450-horsepower (hp) Cummins L9 engines, and Allison 3000 EVS automatic transmissions. The cabs are set up for four firefighters, three of them in H.O. Bostrom self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) seats with IMMI SmartDock brackets.
Southard notes that the wheelbase on the Roadrunners is 222 inches, overall length is 36 feet 9 inches, and overall height is 12 feet 7 inches. “Each Roadrunner has a Vanner 3600 inverter, hot-dipped galvanized subframe and outriggers, four A-frame style outriggers (two at front of the body and two at the rear) with a jack spread of 11 feet 9 inches, and Smart Aerial technology that includes collision avoidance and the ability to short jack the truck,” Southard says.
He points out that each Roadrunner has a Task Force Tips Typhoon 1,250-gallon-per-minute (gpm) remote control monitor at the tip of the 68-foot aerial, a side-mount Waterous S100C20 1,750-gpm pump, a 500-gallon polypropylene water tank, a 40-gallon foam cell, and a FoamPro 2002 single-agent foam system…