Firefighting Trailer (Model 63005)

Model 63005 is a firefighting trailer built for rapid response to veld and bush fires: two 1 000 litre water tanks, a Honda-type twin-impeller pump with electric start, a fire reel with 36 m of output hose and a 10 m suction hose, on a hot-dipped galvanised chassis with a 10 inch electric brake set and a breakaway system.

It is designed for the people who are first on the scene when a fire starts: agricultural landowners, civil contractors, mine sites, conservancies and fire protection associations. The point of a trailer like this is speed - it can be hitched to a bakkie and moving in minutes, it carries its own water, and it can pump from a dam, a reservoir or a bowser using the suction hose when the tanks run dry.

Pump performance is quoted at 45 cubic metres per hour flow, a 120 m rated head and a 10 m self-priming height, driven by a twin-impeller pump with electric start at 3 600 r/min. In practice that is a working firefighting stream at the nozzle plus enough pressure to run a second line or to push water uphill to a fire break.

The trailer itself is built to work on rough ground: a hot-dipped galvanised chassis that resists water and rust, aluminium checker plate decking, a heavy-duty large jockey wheel for moving the trailer into position by hand, 14 inch tyres in a 185/70R14 fitment on a 7-pin plug lighting package, a hand brake and 10 inch electric brakes with a breakaway system so a loaded trailer brakes with the towing vehicle and stops itself if it separates.

The flat deck measures 2.25 m x 1.6 m and the complete trailer including the drawbar measures 4.6 m x 2.10 m x 1.8 m, leaving deck space for hose, tools, knapsack sprayers, a pump set or a slip-on tank unit if you need one. Tanks are recycled IBC units, which keeps replacement simple and inexpensive if one is ever damaged.