Darley’s Tactical Pumper is a compact fire fighting vehicle designed to meet the evolving needs of the fire and emergency service, bridging the gap between full-size fire apparatus and smaller rapid-response vehicles.
The Tactical Pumper vehicle platform is built around medium duty commercially available chassis ranging from a 19,500 lb GVW to a 23,000 lb GVW, the water tank sizes range from 300 gallons to 400 gallons respectively.
With the addition of the compressed air foam system (CAFS), the Tactical Pumper ™ water tank results in approximately 900 – 1200 gallons of usable fire suppression agent which is significantly more effective at extinguishing fire than plain water alone.
The vehicles agility & capability make it an extremely unique offering that covers a wide array of emergency response scenarios.
For example, a department running a high frequency of EMS calls can dispatch their Tactical Pumper regularly (manned with up to four occupants) to enhance the life of their first out engine.
If rerouted from an EMS call to a structure fire, the Tactical Pumper ™ is equipped with the exact same pump capability, and debatably a more effective suppression agent when considering the CAFS extinguishing agent, as 90% of the first due engines in the fire service (Based on North American Standards).
Another common setting we see customers utilizing Tactical Pumpers ™ in is WUI (Wildland Urban Interface) settings.
The CAFS (Compressed Air Foam) technology is an extremely effective tool for initial attack & proactive risk mitigation in structural firefighting.
The same is true in wildland attack and wildfire resilience initiatives.
When CAFS is sprayed on a structure or landscape prior to fire ignition, it creates a foam blanket protecting the substrate from heat while greatly reducing the probability of future ignition.
This can be used internally or externally on a structure or upon landscapes which risk burn-over in wildland fire fighting applications.
To date customer have shared a wide variety of reasons for choosing Darley’s Tactical Pumper ™.
In almost every case, the Tactical Pumper is looked at as a complimentary asset to their full-sized engine.
A common thread across our customer base is the Tactical Pumper exceeds the needs of 90% of the incidents they respond to.
Leveraging a tactical pumper helps customers extend the life of their full-sized pumper which enables them to optimize budgets without sacrificing capabilities.
Also worth noting, the maintenance costs go down considerably due to the comparatively in-expensive parts and service costs on smaller apparatus.
Size, agility, and design characteristics are extremely important in incident response.
Almost every incident presents a unique challenge to fire & emergency personnel.
Some incidents favour large traditional apparatus like quints, engines, tankers, ladders, or towers.
Other incidents favour compact, highly agile vehicles.
The types of incident Tactical Pumper Customers commonly reference include: Beach Rescue & fire protection; EMS response; municipal fire protection in rural settings; structural fire protection for vacation home communities with long narrow driveways & hard to reach structures (lake homes, mountain homes, & costal communities); the last and most common incident profile includes cities built with small congested streets, tight allies, and little to no spacing between homes.
The compact highly effective nature of the Darley Tactical Pumper™ provides fire and emergency personnel a tool that enables them to increase response time, effectiveness, & accessibility resulting in a safer community.
In the world of firefighting, the 1500 GPM pump has become the gold standard.
1500 gallons per minute of pumping capacity meets or exceeds the demands of most municipal fire incidents.
Darley’s PSM 1500 GPM (gallon per minute) pump has founds its way into many fire fleets across the globe.
Largely due to its durability, reliability, service ability, smooth flow profile, & its ability to meet the rigorous demands of almost all municipal fire incidents.
When designing the Darley Tactical Pumper, we knew we needed to include the PSM fire pump to effectively address the broadest array of incidence response scenarios.
The Compressed air foam system, commonly referred to as CAFS, is the key to the Tactical Pumper’s effectiveness.
When you are responding to incidents with a compact vehicle and a smaller water tank than a traditional apparatus, you need to have a means to enhance or “stretch” water capacity.
The CAFS system allows departments to stretch the water considerably further than they could if they were using plain water as their suppression agent.
Typically, you can count on the water utilization to be reduced by a factor of 3 times when using an effect compressed air foam system.
Additionally, CAFS increases fire suppression effectiveness resulting in an ability to expediently extinguish fire that can’t be seen with water alone.
While foam and water combinations (Non-CAFS) also increase fire suppression efficiency, foam and water combinations do not “stretch” water like CAFS.
All that being said, we do offer our Tactical Pumper in water only & water and foam configurations.
Depending on the application, non-CAFS Tactical pumpers can be an effective tool in a departments fleet.
Darley’s chassis selection is driven by a number of factors but weighted heavily by available horse power, gross vehicle weight ratings, driveability, durability, reliability and application use case.
When we looked at statistics from the worlds fire service, we felt their was a need for a budget friendly readily available fire truck that had performance characteristics & capabilities to meet the demands of a broad array of incidents.
What we came up with was our Tactical Pumper line that would be built on the commercially available International CV515 & Ford F550.
Both Chassis selected are strong platforms with a few unique and distinctly different characteristics.
The CV515 takes the cake when it comes to gross vehicle weight rating and available horse power.
The F550 has improved driveability and commonality in the fire & emergency industry.
To Darley’s Tactical Pumper line up, the benefits result in two unique product characteristics that customer can choose between.
The Ford F550’s enhanced driveability enables us to offer our Tactical Pumper with a super single tire and wheel package.
The CV515 enables us to offer the Tactical Pumper with a 400 gallon water tank.
While you cant mix and match these distinguishing features between the chassis, customers tend to find confidence in one or the other based on the incidents they respond too.
The enhanced driveability in our Tactical Pumper offering falls largely on the chassis we select.
As previously mentioned, our Tactical Pumper equipped with the F550 chassis has the best drivability in our fleet.
Customers often share it feels like driving a pickup truck.
Tactical Pumpers equipped with the CV515 chassis drive more like a medium duty truck, which is still a major improvement from traditional fire apparatus.
In both cases, drivers who are less experienced tend to gain confidence faster & drive safer than they would driving a full-sized traditional fire apparatus.
The maintenance costs of a Tactical Pumper are greatly reduced when compared to a Traditional full-sized apparatus.
At the basic level, you have your PM intervals (preventative maintenance) like oil changes, filters and fluid levels inspections.
Additionally, you have general wear components like tires, belts, breaks and so on.
The costs associated with PMs, service & replacement parts on a medium duty chassis are considerably less than a heavy duty chassis.
The total cost of ownership for a Tactical Pumper is much easier for departments to shoulder than a traditional fire apparatus.
We believe the Tactical Pumper will help modernize emergency response in the coming years.
While traditional apparatus will always be a staple in emergency response, the Tactical Pumper will continue to grow in popularity due to its effectiveness and the positive impact it has on fire departments budgets.
Further, it will enable departments to preserve, or stretch, the life to their traditional fire apparatus by reducing hours & mileage on heavy duty chassis that are required for specific incidents.
We anticipate Darley’s Tactical Pumper becoming a complimentary asset for departments throughout the fire and emergency industry.
