History

Approximately 11,000 Austin A-40 Pickups were built in 1951. Of those, only ONE was built by Austin of England as a fire truck or "fire tender". It came equipped with a ladder, hose rack and pulled a utility trailer with a pump unit. This mini fire truck was built specifically for, and did service in, the Cheddar Gorge area of England. (This was a tourist area along the coast which had very narrow roads carved out of the bluffs which made it impossible for larger fire fighting equipment to navigate).

A major part of the package as previously noted, was the TYPE "F.S.M." pumper mounted on the special utility trailer. This unit is powered by a Coventry Climax engine and is capable of pumping up to 200 gallons per minute. This was an ideal combination for accessing hard to get to areas and an added feature, if in an extremely hard to get to location, the pumper itself was mounted on its' own cart and could be downloaded and moved to a desired area by a single individual, much like a wheelbarrow. This tiny but well designed unit made an ideal first line of defense when larger fire fighting equipment could not access the location.