During our seminar in Levelland, Texas last month we got to use a large, tractor-trailer style tanker (tender) during the seminar's 2-hr water supply drill. Folks from the Sundown FD brought their 7,000 gal tractor trailer tanker to class on Sunday and we worked on how best to utilize the rig's water at the dumpsite. The tanker is equipped with two, 200 gpm pumps so its pump-off ability is somewhat limited when supporting structural fire attack operations. (Keep in mind that this part of Texas see a tremendous amount of grass/brush fire duty...so the big water tender supports those operations just fine.)

The plan was to have Tanker 25 be the last-arriving tanker on the dispatch card and folks had to figure out how best to use the rig. The plan that was implemented positioned Tanker 25 to the rear of the dump site pumper and the crew supplied water directly into the primary dump tank using 100-ft of 2-1/2-in hose and a single length of 2-1/2-in suction hose. During the drill, Tanker 25 gave up just over half of its water into the primary dump tank and the primary dump tank never ran out of water. The "open-relay" operation proved a good use for the large capacity/low flow tanker.