New truck for Boyben

Last Wednesday, July 7, Graham Bunyan, operations support officer at the Gilgandra Rural Fire Brigade, handed over the keys. Captain at Boyben, Tom Ward, was very pleased with the new kit.

“It’s great. They’ve done a few things to it, upgraded the system, upgraded the safety features,” said Mr Ward.

The ring main system on the old truck, which is designed to run water over the cabs and windscreen of trucks to stop front parts melting, was equivalent to a large garden sprinkler. Realistically, the water would have evaporated before it could dampen the truck in a fire.

The updated truck includes a much more powerful ring main system, a simpler operation at the back, a bigger pump, GPS system, reversing camera, and the crowd favourite, a motorised hose reel.

“It’s really hard to wind them up at the end of a day. So this is very exciting,” said Boyben deputy captain, Ross Quayle.

Mr Bunyan thought he would try the inevitable.

“One thing you can’t do is use it to pull you up a hill. It cuts out when you put too much weight on it. I discovered that, it was the first thing I tried with one. I thought, this will be good, wind me up!” said Mr Bunyan.

“The safer we make or trucks, the safer it is for our firefighters. That’s the aim of the game.”

More trucks will be handed over to local brigades in the coming weeks.