Mobile Equipment

CAL FIRE owns and operates over 3,000 fire and emergency response and resource protection vehicles.

CAL FIRE's mobile equipment includes everything from fire engines, bulldozers, crew carrying vehicles, administrative vehicles, mobile kitchen units, mobile communications units, trailers, forklifts, construction equipment, and support units, to All Terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, and even insect control vehicles.

Ensuring that CAL FIRE personnel statewide have the very best emergency response and resource protection vehicles is the responsibility of the staff of the CAL FIRE Mobile Equipment Facility. The facility is located in Davis, California, just outside of Sacramento. Staff is responsible for design, acquisition; maintenance, major repairs, replacement and disposal of all CAL FIRE-owned vehicles, and provides these services for local government equipment when requested. CAL FIRE fleet managers and equipment mechanics located statewide keep the Department's mobile fleet rolling on a daily basis.

Capability, safety and reliability are the essential requirements for all CAL FIRE equipment. Effective preventative maintenance and repair programs assure that these requirements are met. Inspection, inventory management, and long-range planning assures that CAL FIRE staff will always have the right vehicles, and the best vehicles, to handle all of California's emergency and resource protection needs.

The next Fixed Price Engine sale will be May 2022, for more information please click on the Fixed Sale #63 link below.

The fire apparatus of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) have always been an essential tool for the agency to accomplish its mission of protecting California's citizens, forest lands and urban interface from destruction by wildfire.

The "State Division of Forestry" acquired one Moreland fire truck in 1928, and four more in 1929. Twenty-eight additional Ford fire trucks were acquired in 1930 and 1931. By 1934 162 vehicles were in the inventory. In 1938 the Davis Equipment Facility was in operation and assistant rangers were given winter work building fire trucks there. By 1945 the inventory had reached 733. Military surplus vehicles were widely used by CAL FIRE after WWII. In 1948, 61 Dodge crew trucks were added to the fire fighting fleet.

From the beginning to the present, great changes have been made. The fleet size reached 1,400 vehicles in 1961. Crew buses were added to the fleet in the early 1960s to transport Conservation Camp crews to projects and fires. Thirteen passenger Crew Carrying Vehicles (CCVs) built in the 1970s have evolved into 17 passenger, code 3 equipped, fully air conditioned Emergency Crew Transports (ECTs) equipped with automatic transmissions and retarders.

Over the last 50 year period many improvements have kept CAL FIRE fire apparatus in the lead for state of the art developments. Safety and operational innovations have made the CAL FIRE fleet one of the most effective in the world for protection of both the wildland and urban interface. Major improvements were made in the 1980s. Though some personnel used to ride on the back of engines, protected by roll bars, better, larger and easier to operate fire engines have since evolved featuring fully enclosed, air conditioned cabs for all personnel to ride in safety and comfort. Two-stage, hydrostatically driven fire pumps developed in the late 1980s allowed for more versatile and effective fire fighting techniques.

Other mobile equipment has been added to the fleet as well. Modern 1,000 meal capacity Mobile Kitchen Units (MKUs) provide healthy and nutritious food on emergency incidents. Large Mobile Command Centers (MCCs) provide a full range of communications and statistical management information to more effectively handle the large variety of emergency incident work that CAL FIRE personnel are now asked to manage.

The bulldozer fleet has also undergone change. Enclosed, air conditioned cabs on bulldozers protect the operators from heat, dust and noise and provide a better environment from which to do their fire fighting work. CAL FIRE's dozer/transport fleet has seen minor upgrades from Caterpillar D6C dozers built in the 1960s to later model Caterpillar D6XL and D6M series high-track dozers with enclosed cabs. These upgrades have been accomplished through the timely purchase of low hour, used equipment and a number of new, higher horsepower, air conditioned transports.

Entering the new millennium, two-stage, 500 GPM, PTO operated fire pumps with 180 GPM diesel powered auxiliary pumps are being designed for fire apparatus and are currently built according to NFPA guidelines. The current fleet consists of over 2,800 vehicles which includes 383 front line fire engines in 12 different models, 237 crew buses and 58 bulldozers.

The Federal Excess Personal Property Program was enacted by Congress under the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949 and the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act of 1978. The Act directs the Secretary of Agriculture to encourage the use of FEPP to assist in reducing state fire budgets by loaning federal-owned property to state foresters and their cooperators. To qualify for this program, a fire department must meet a number of requirements, one being a responsibility for providing fire protection on wildlands within the department's jurisdiction. The U.S. Forest Service monitors the use of loaned property to ensure that all FEPP acquired is used 90 percent for fire protection support and only 10 percent for other support.

The FEPP Program enables the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) to acquire, "on loan" from the federal government, property that assists the Department in fulfilling its emergency response mission. That property includes such items as trucks, fire tools, hoses, vehicle parts, nozzles, generators, air compressors, fire protection clothing, aircraft, and aircraft parts.

CAL FIRE acquires approximately one-third of all FEPP nationwide with acquisitions exceeding over $200 million since 1978. FEPP is used to support Department units and programs statewide. For example, the CAL FIRE Aviation Program acquired $25 million worth of FEPP in 1996 alone, mainly in the form of 20 military S-2E/G airtankers that are being retrofitted as turbine fire fighting aircraft. While the Department pays for the retrofitting, the aircraft were free. On a much smaller scale, one CAL FIRE unit saved $8,000 by acquiring shop rags from the FEPP Program. As FEPP is loaned, when CAL FIRE no longer has a need for the property, it is turned back to the federal government which offers it to other government agencies and eventually sends it to public sale.

You can learn more about this program at the federal FEPP website.

For more information on CAL FIRE's use of FEPP, please reach out to [email protected].