The first mobile piece of fire apparatus was a hand drawn pump developed in the 1700s. This early pump was used to augment the efforts of the bucket brigade. These portable pumps delivered water to a fire more steadily and with more force, but had their drawbacks. The physical demands of using such equipment had to be at least equal to the physical strain of filling and passing buckets up and down a line as quickly as possible. Running through the streets dragging the pump to the fire left the responding personnel too fatigued to do much of anything once they reached the scene and the operation of these early pumps still demanded physical exertion on the part of the responders.

In the Nineteenth Century horse drawn fire wagons started to come into vogue. Contrary to what one would think the fire fighters of that era were not appreciative of an opportunity to be relieved of the strenuous duty of man-handling their equipment in order to get it to where it was needed. The opposite was true. Many firemen believed that a “Stinking horse” had no place in a fire station. By the mid Eighteenth Century fire wagons had become so heavy that having them drawn by horses was an absolute necessity.

In the 1840s a company based in New York City developed a steam powered fire wagon that was met with even less enthusiasm than the horse drawn wagon. The fire companies believed that steam power was tantamount to introducing a new danger into an already dangerous situation. By the time a decade had passed fire companies had to recognize and accept the advantages that steam power offered.

With the advent of the automobile came the birth of the fire truck. The early trucks consisted of fire wagon bodies that were mounted on an automotive chassis. In the Nineteen-teens the two leading producers of the new fangled fire truck were Mack and Ahrens-Fox. Over time these early conversions would evolve into the modern pumper, ladder truck, and specialty trucks of today.