Eighty-Four years ago, the department’s much-anticipated Ahrens-Fox apparatus arrived in Ho-Ho-Kus from Cincinnati, Ohio via open rail boxcar. By all accounts, priced at $12,421.25, this was the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ of firetrucks. The 1937 quad was a combination pumper, city service ladder truck, water tank and hose wagon that measured an impressive 40 feet long requiring a new addition to the firehouse to accommodate its length. The state-of-the-art model CTU, reg. no. 4019 sported a front-mounted 750 gallon per minute 8-piston pump, the last of its type, a five-ladder complement totaling 177 feet, 200 feet of rubber booster hose, and a hose bed that could hold up to 2000 feet of 2.5-inch hose. The “Y” shaped split hose bed design fed two lines simultaneously so as not to snag the ladders that extended several feet past the rear end of the truck. Under the hood stood a formidable six-cylinder 190 horsepower engine. The driver sat 12 feet distance behind the front bumper, distinguishable by the chromed sphere above the pump that held air and smoothed the outgoing pressure fluctuations from the piston pump. Fondly nicknamed “The Fox”, the quad had its ultimate test in 1960 at the Chestnut Ridge Riding Stable inferno pumping 27 hours straight at the largest fire ever to occur in the borough.
