FMC / John Bean Fire Apparatus

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About FMC / John Bean Fire Apparatus

FMC (Farm Machinery & Chemical, Corporation) Fire Apparatus. Founded by John Bean who originally made farm grade fog sprayers. The move to fire apparatus was by pure chance.
In the late 1930s an orchard owner successfully used his dependable John Bean sprayer to extinguish a neighbor's house fire. This accidental success story led to the development of the high pressure fog system which helped put out fires during WWII, and soon led to the first High Pressure Fog Fire Fighter body that could be put on any truck chassis.This success propelled John Bean to become one of the revered names in the fire apparatus industry through the post-war years until their slow weaning of the Bean name and eventual demise in the early 1990s. FMC also produced fire truck fire pumps and pumper bodies, and had an OEM arrangement with LTI (Ladder Towers Inc.) to market aerial ladders. In the early 1980s the Fire apparatus division of FMC tried to expand its role in aerial ladders on fire trucks, leveraging the Link-Belt crane division. FMC was ultimately unsuccessful in its expansion into production of aerial ladders. The FMC Fire Apparatus division was also ultimately shut down in 1990.

Probably most remembered as being used by rural fire departments as an economical fire engine, many large cities even acquired FMC/Bean apparatus.

Source: Wikipedia and the book, "John Bean & FMC Fire Apparatus" by John H. Reith