Case Study: Airport Rescue Fire Truck

A company that creates airport rescue fire trucks needed to cut truck weight in order to hit their acceleration goals, allowing fire fighters to get to crash sites as quickly as possible to save lives. 

The Challenge

Before coming to ICP, the customer floated a few ideas for weight distribution. Larger engine? No, too bulky and expensive. Store less water? Not an option – the trucks need all the water they can carry.

We suggested reducing the weight of the truck itself, so that they wouldn’t have to sacrifice engine quality or water storage, yet still achieve faster acceleration.

 

Did you know? Thermoformed plastic parts are up to 30-40% lighter than fiberglass parts!

 

 

Our Solution

We began work on a repeatable process. We began by working with the customer to identify fiberglass parts that could be thermoformed instead. ICP then provided manufacturability design recommendations to help the firetruck engineers design the parts. 

ICP was able to convert over 20 parts from fiberglass to thermoformed parts greatly assisting in reducing weight of the vehicle. 

The end results for the client:

• The Airport Rescue Fire Truck exceeded their acceleration goals with the lighter weight thermoformed parts. 
• ICP has strengthened our partnership with the customer to help in additional applications and continues to grow along side the customer. 

This example shows how ICP helped our client work within their limitations to create a solution that achieved their desired end results, without compromise.