Vehicles of the U.S. Forest Service
Part 1: The United States Forest Service
By Aaron Woods
(1915 Model T Speeder, Sierra National Forest)
Before I get into the vehicles used by the USFS a little background of the agency is required.
The USFS was created in 1905 to manage the Forest Reserves designated during the 1890s. The USFS is the only Federal wildland fire agency under the Department of Agriculture, the other 4 large agencies (National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife, and Bureau of Indian Affairs) being under the Department of the Interior.
From the earliest days the agency was quick to adopt technology that could improve the management of its lands. Motor vehicles and aircraft were in used early in the agencies existence. During the 1920s the use of trucks and large touring cars to transport crews and supplies to the fire line was becoming common. By the 1930s “mountain fire trucks” were becoming wide spread on the more fire prone forests. Although these vehicles were fire engines, the Forest Service called them tanker trucks, a term used by the USFS for their fire engines into the 1980s.
The USFS took several steps to improve its ability to share new developments across the agency. In 1936 it began publishing a technical journal Fire Control Notes (now called Fire Management Today). Shortly after World War 2 it established two technology and development laboratories, one in Missoula, Montana, the other in Arcadia, California (the Arcadia lab was moved to San Dimas, CA in 1965). One of the first tasks assigned to the Arcadia lab was standardizing equipment across the forests.
Many of the tools used on the fire line today were developed by the USFS. Two of the best known, the Pulaski and McLeod carry the names of their inventors, Edward Pulaski and Malcolm McLeod, both USFS employees. The Forest Service was a major force in the use of organized crews, fire engines, bull dozers and aircraft in wildland firefighting.
Today the US Forest Service manages 193 million acres of land (an area approximately the size of Texas), including 155 National Forests and 20 National Grasslands. The agency is divided into 9 regions each with 15-20 forests. These regions are numbered 1 through 10 (there is no Region 7). Through the first half of the century there were 3 regions covering the eastern and southern states. These regions were much smaller than those of the western states, so as an effort to improve efficiency Region 7 was eliminated in 1965, and its forests divided up between Regions 8 and 9.
The Regions (Regional boundaries do not always follow state lines, so some states may be listed more than once).
1 Northern Region (Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota)
2 Rocky Mountain Region (Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas)
3 Southwest Region (Arizona, New Mexico, Texas)
4 Intermountain Region (Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming)
5 Pacific South West (California, Hawaii)
6 Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington)
7 (eliminated in 1965)
8 Southern Region (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida)
9 Eastern Region (Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland)
10 Alaska Region (Alaska)
Each of these regions has a character of their own which has had an influence on the design of equipment.
Regions 3, 5 and 6 are among the most fire prone, with long fire seasons. They also have large populations and were some of the first to recognize the wildland urban interface. These factors have led to these regions having the largest fire organizations.
Regions 1, 2 and 4 frequently have large fires, but shorter fire seasons. They also have small widely spaced populations compared to most of the other regions resulting in smaller fire organizations.
Regions 8 and 9 have younger, smaller forests. Unlike the forests of the west, most of the forests in these regions stand on land completely cut over by the end of the 19th century. Forests in these regions tend to have less intense fires and very small fire organizations. Unlike the other regions that have developed their own specialized fire apparatus, Regions 8 and 9 have generally used “off the shelf” equipment, purchased locally. Heavy engines are rare in these regions most engines being built on 3/4 ton and 1 ton trucks.
Region 10 manages the sparsely populated lands in Alaska, providing significantly different issues from the other regions. Due to the vast roadless areas involved firefighting in Alaska is dominated by aircraft used to quickly deliver firefighting resources where they are needed.
