LEARNING TO DRIVE A TILLER TRUCK

In lower Manhattan the streets are really narrow and cars are always parked where they don’t belong, making it impossible to maneuver an aerial truck to a fire.  

The city bought 8 tiller aerial trucks (a tiller is an aerial ladder truck with an extra set of wheels in the rear steered  by a firefighter sitting back there.  The city was told these trucks could maneuver through the narrow streets.  Since the truck was 57 foot long, it could not negotiate the streets and turns even with the additional rear wheel controls.  Our side of the city was offered 4 tillers at a good price to see if they would work out in our district.  

I was a Lieutenant by now and was told to take 4 men in a Battalion Chief’s car out to Montauk, Long Island and pick up an old tiller truck that the city had bought from a volunteer Fire Department.  I took 4 of the best of the best, the oldest and most experienced drivers in our Firehouse.  No one had ever driven a tiller before.  When they gave me this assignment, I went to the library to read up on how to drive a tiller.  

The tiller the city bought was old and in terrible shape.  The tiller cab had no glass in it and the seat was missing.  A firefighter had to sit on a tied up bundle of newspaper to drive the rear wheels. We drove back to the city at 30 mph on the Long Island Expressway. Three of us on the tiller and 1 firefighter drove the Chief’s car back. Every hour the Firefighters would alternate driving positions. Since I was the only officer, I had to ride in the tiller all the way back - up front where there was no glass and no seat. Talk about rank not having any privileges.

The city got permission to use the huge parking lot at the Yonkers race track during the day when it was not open to the public.  We set up orange cones the width of the narrow streets and firehouse door openings.  The Firefighters practiced for weeks and became expert drivers.  One day they challenged me to drive the rear wheels.  They made every maneuver they could to make me hit an orange cone.  I never hit one.  On the way back to take this tiller to the warehouse where we kept it overnight, I turned the rear wheels sharply to the left causing them to run parallel to the front wheels.  I called the driver’s radio and told him to look out his left window.  There I was running even with his steering wheel and waving at him.  They were surprised and shocked.  They had never seen this maneuver.  Reading everything about a tiller helped me get even with these drivers.  

The chief decided to try 2 tillers for a year to see if they could work out.  These trucks were just too big and some could not even get out of a firehouse because of phone or light poles opposite the firehouse.  A new aerial truck came out at this time.  It was called a rear mount.  The controls for the aerial ladder were over the rear wheels and the aerial ladder extended over the cab and hood of the truck making it a little bit bigger than an engine but much shorter than the tiller.  This new aerial ladder was just as maneuverable as an engine and it was the wave of the future.  It had an automatic transmission, a heater, power steering, a roof over the cab – all the niceties that the rigs I had to drive never had. Red was replaced with the new Lime green that was coming out as the new color for fire apparatus.  Supposedly it was more visible at night, especially with the new blue flashing lights.   Apparently to someone who is color blind, red appears black. 

Whatever color the rig is, if you see one coming – get out of its way!

LET ME DRIVE - PLEASE!!!!

I was on the job about a week when the Captain called me up to the large map of the City streets.  The City was divided into square blocks: 1 East to 10 West and 1 North to 10 South.  Alarms were transmitted as a 4-digit code – the first 2 digits told in what section of the City the alarm came from, e.g. a 1,1 code meant North East section; a 10,10 was the South West section.  The next 2 digits told what cross section in the square block it came from.  The Captain drew red squares around each of our first due sections.  He told me to learn one section at a time including the names of the streets and what route to take to get to specific square block.  He gave me 4 days to learn each square then he would quiz me.  He didn’t realize that I had grown up in this neighborhood and, as a kid, I had been on almost every street.  I didn’t always know the names of the streets, but I knew how to get there and I would remember them by who had lived where.  So all I really had to do was learn the street names.  

On my first test, the Captain asked “How do you get to square one and what are the names of the streets.  I answered all of his questions.  I finally told him I had grown up inside these “squares.”  He asked me about square #2.  After about an hour, I had answered almost half of our first due districts correctly.  The Captain shook his head and told me to learn the rest of our district.  He tested me on my next night tour and I got an A. I don’t know if he was impressed or if I just drove him crazy, but in lots of the squares I even pointed out where the fire hydrants were located.  We were nosy kids and my friends and I spent our childhoods roaming every inch of these “squares.”  

On the next day shift, the Captain took me (the “proby”) and 2 other new firemen out for driving practice.  The fire engine had only one bench seat up front, behind the windshield.  A firefighter drove on the left and the Officer rode on the right and operated the siren and rang the large bell on the front right fender.  The rest of the crew stood up on a 2-foot wide rear bumper and held onto a chrome bar above the hose bed.  I remember responding to fires in the freezing cold and, when we hit a bump in the road, we’d all be thrown 2 feet up into the air.  By the time you got to the fire, you were already beaten up, just from the ride.  But, back to the driving. 

The first to drive was the senior Firefighter among us.  This, of course, meant I would be last.  The first Firefighter didn’t know how to drive a stick shift.  We bounced and rocked and stalled and he ground gears for blocks.  The Captain gave up on him and told #2 to come up and drive.  At least he knew how to shift, but he was scared to death of the length and width of the fire engine.  He came so close to hitting parked cars and moved over so far when he passed a car, the Captain was having apoplexy.  Next it was my turn. 

Now I really wanted to be a driver – for a lot of reasons.  I had always been interested in mechanical and engineering jobs. I often think that’s really what I was meant to do.  But this looked like my ideal job.  The driver of the engine was called the MPO – motor pump operator.  He pulled the rig up to the fire and began to organize the necessary flow of water.  He controlled the flow as well as the amount of pressure needed for that situation.  He also wasn’t running into the burning building trying to buck the vermin who were leaving.  If you were a ladder driver, you controlled the aerial ladder – from outside – another mechanical/engineering type of job.  You weren’t spending your entire career inside an inferno breathing toxic chemicals.  So, I began to make my pitch to the Captain. 

I looked at the shift handle (it was a 5-speed floor shift.) I said to the Captain, “I guess it’s easier on the clutch and the throw-out bearing if I double clutch between gears.” (I had learned a lot driving that dump truck in Connecticut.) He looked at me and said something about me knowing how to double clutch??? I said “Sure” and took off down the street.  I drove for about an hour, made lots of turns, stops, and up and down hills.  He liked that I knew how to down-shift going down hills and approaching stop signs or a traffic light.  He asked me why I did that.  I told him that, since we had 500 gallons of water in the tank at 8.5 lbs. per gallon it creates a lot of forward inertia to the fire engine.  And by down-shifting the transmission it helps the brakes to stop our forward motion.  (I had also paid attention in the Fire Academy classes.)  I also told him I could shift the transmission without using the clutch (another trick I learned driving the dump truck.)  He claimed it couldn’t be done.  I did it 3 or 4 times and then he said he wanted me to drive back to the firehouse after all alarms.  He also wanted me to have driving practice every day shift.  I then became a back-up driver for both the engine and the ladder company.  I was on my way! 

One night we received an alarm for a house fire.  We were told the house was fully involved and it belonged to a fire officer.  The house was set way back from the road up on a hill.  Another firefighter and I dragged a 2 ½  inch line up to the front door then attached a double Y shut-off and hooked up 2 lengths of 1 ½ ” hose.  I gave the driver the signal to start the water flowing.  We ran into the building and started to put out the fire.  We ran out of water less than a minute later.  We both ran outside for fear of being burned.  I went running down to the fire engine.  The driver was confused and couldn’t get any water into the pump.  He was priming the pump so much that the whole rig was rocking back and forth.  Water was coming out of the vent on the top of the tank.  I told Tom that the water he sent up to us was the 500 gallons in the tank.  Then he had opened the hydrant valve so the water went into the pump – but he never opened the valve to send it into the hoses.  The water went into the tank and had nowhere to go – so it started shooting out the vent.   He looked at me like I was crazy.  He said he was very nervous because it was a fire officer’s house.  I opened and closed the right valves and sent the right water up to the house.  3 other engine companies responded and we knocked the fire out.  When everything was out, we dragged the hose back to the engine and loaded it onto the hose bed.  This driver was the senior driver and he asked me to drive back to the firehouse.  Back at the fire station, he told the Captain that he didn’t want to drive any more.  He said he was getting too old and he was afraid he might injure other firefighters.  That’s when I became a full-time driver.  

I had a friend who was a ladder company driver.  He taught me how to operate the aerial ladder.  On the way back from fires, he would drive my engine and I would drive his ladder truck.  I asked the Captain who rode on the ladder truck to teach me how to operate the ladder.  I became a permanent driver for both rigs.  We worked a 3-day shift – Day 1, I drove the engine; Day 2, the ladder, Day 3 was a tossup depending which officer was working.  I loved being a driver and I drove both rigs for 6 years – until I got promoted.