It’s TILLER Time

9 Comments on It’s TILLER Time

1. My uncle was a tillerman on a ladder truck
   Hook-and-ladder. Ladder truck. That fire truck with the guy who sits in the back. You’ve probably called a tiller truck and tiller driver one of those things, and we all know what you were taking about. But by definition (ours, not Webster’s), a tiller truck is the big-ass fire truck with the big-ass ladder on top. The tiller is a rear-steering position, because, technically, the back of a tiller truck is a trailer, steering independently of the front half of the fire truck. The tillerman is the one who steers the back end of the truck. Because it’s a trailer, one false move and it can jackknife.

2. Other than driving a zamboni ice resurfacing vehicle at an NHL game, tillerman hits the bucket list in the top ten.

3. Tiller…..is there any relationship between that and Roto??
   I’m thinking of putting in a garden this spring.
   And, if I make the garden big enough, I’ll need a fire hose to water it.

4. L.I. still has a few volunteer companies running tillers, believe it or not..

5. There was a fire inspector that would never take a hotel room unless it was 8th floor or below, and facing a street – so a ladder truck could reach him if there was a fire.

6. A lot of smaller agencies are still using tillers.

7. I believe I just saw a picture of Palm Beach County FD with a Tiller, very surprising. They are still plenty in use in NYC, especially downtown Manhattan. What was also a very unique NYC piece of apparatus in FDNY was the “Super Pumper” from back in the late 60s-70s that was used to massive amounts of water when the old tenement buildings were being burned out in the Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn in the bad old days. It was a giant pump on a trailer bed.

8. Kramer!!!

9. A 15 foot fire engine? My Mazda is about 15 feet long. Maybe 15 yards, but surely not feet.