Ford / Howe Model T Pumper. 1918. The Howe Fire Apparatus Company adapted its fire pump and booster tank to a Ford Model T chassis for several hundred of these modest little pumpers for the U.S. Army in World War I. This one went as surplus in 1920 to the volunteers of Germantown, Illinois, where it saw service until 1956.
It has a powerful 250 gpm three cylinder piston pump that must have taxed the diminutive four cylinder thirty horsepower engine. There’s also a thirty gallon booster tank and booster hose reel, plus several hundred feet of 2 ½ inch hose. The long “squirrel tail” style suction hose came in handy for drafting water from rivers or ponds. The engine could draft water without getting the truck too close to a soggy river bank.
The truck was refurbished by Henry Crost.