Justice Fire Department history « chicagoareafire.com

Justice Fire Department history

This from Mike Summa for #TBT:

Fort TBT- The Justice Fire Dept.’s 1971 Mack CF 1250/500.

Mike Summa

Mike Summa photo

The Justice Fire Dept.’s 1971 Mack CF 1250/500.
Mike Summa photo

Tags: #TBT, Justice Fire Department history, Mike Summa, throw back thursday, throwbackthursday, vintage Mack fire engine

This entry was posted on September 12, 2018, 7:00 AM and is filed under Fire Department History, Historic fire apparatus, throwbackthursday. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Comments

#1 by Crabbymilton on September 12, 2018 - 1:50 PM

Yes the Dayton types have pretty much gone the way of the 8 track.and stick shift in fire apparatus and buses.
Now it’s steel vs aluminum wheels.
#2 by David on September 12, 2018 - 12:33 PM

Crabby, I agree with that, there are certain things that we won’t see again and you’re right that it’s probably mostly for a good reason. Speaking of which I still miss the spoke wheels on fire rigs (and trucks in general), they still make them, but it’s mostly budds everywhere now. I think we spoke about this here already a few years ago.
#3 by CrabbyMilton on September 12, 2018 - 11:57 AM

Fair enough David I didn’t mean to insult you.
I would imagine one could spec an unit on a MACK chassis but for similar costs, you could have a custom chassis. All things being relatively equal, why not have a custom purpose built chassis as opposed to a commercial chassis adapted for fire/rescue use? Commercial chassis fire apparatus have been around forever and many have served well. But many cities have tried them and found that the lower cost came back to bite them. I know Milwaukee had almost an entire fleet of such rigs back in the ’80’s and ’90’s with mixed results. Then they finally went custom back around 20 years ago and never looked back.
Remember, we all have our favorite things that have disappeared. You have to ask if they were viewed so favorably, then why are they no longer around?
Not saying that your MACK’s are bad but most FD’s don’t spec them anymore.
#4 by Austin on September 12, 2018 - 11:32 AM

St. Charles use to have a retro style Seagrave ladder truck. I think it was a ’99 or something like that. They hardly used it, so not even sure what the point was having it. Unless they bought a supper old Seagrave, and it was a refrub. But I remember it was listed as (I think) a ’99 on their website.
#5 by David on September 12, 2018 - 10:45 AM

Crabby I meant to use any of their commercial chassis like Granite or Terrapro for some of the special rigs like the Collapse Rescues, Rescue Vac (5-2-4) or something similar. The retro-looking Seagrave would be interesting, it’s a shame we’ll probably never get to see any of these things happen…
#6 by Crabbymilton on September 12, 2018 - 9:47 AM

MACK stopped building fire apparatus chassis in 1990 so there’s no chance of that.
Having said that, it would be neat if SEAGRAVE would come out with a modern version of their 70th ANNIVERSARY chassis.
In other words, that same classic look but with modern features.
I doubt that’s going to happen but I can dream.
#7 by David on September 12, 2018 - 9:20 AM

Yep, they looked just great, I wonder if the CFD will ever purchase any Mack chassis for any of the special rigs again, I’d love to see a brand new Mack in the CFD. They should try to be less practical and listen to the fans once in a while!
#8 by CrabbyMilton on September 12, 2018 - 7:12 AM

Even though I’m not a much of a MACK fan, those were sharp looking and had a very long production life.