1947 Ward LaFrance T-85 Pumper

Finding a Fire Truck Like the One Your Community Had Decades Ago Is No Easy Task. But If You’re Successful, Be Ready to Attract Attention...and Videos.

TALKING ABOUT CLONES usually means talking about muscle cars, something that probably couldn’t be further from Frank Mazur’s long-term project, and mentioning tribute cars doesn’t fit much better.

“I wanted a Ward LaFrance,” Mazur explained, “simply because a Ward LaFrance was the truck that I used to chase around when I was a kid. A Ward LaFrance was the truck that picked my father up in front of the house to take him to the fires because back in those days, nobody actually went to the firehouse. What they did was as the truck went by, it slowed down and they jumped on.”

The Ward LaFrance that his father rode to fires as a volunteer was a 1946 T-75 pumper owned by Eagle Hose Company No. 1 in Dickson City, Pennsylvania. Mazur, who also is a firefighter there, now owns the 1947 T-85 pumper shown on these pages. It was as close as he could realistically get to the original, which hints at the searching that led up to the purchase in 2014. Hunting for almost any specific fire truck could be a time-consuming task and while Ward LaFrance was a longestablished builder, the numbers of various vehicles it built were relatively low.

Moving From Commercial Vehicles to Fire Trucks

Ward LaFrance began in 1916 and its name effectively ensured confusion with American LaFrance. Beyond the names’ similarity, both were based in Elmira, New York, and had family ties. Addison Ward LaFrance had worked in the business his family owned— American LaFrance— before starting the Ward LaFrance Truck Corp.

Ward LaFrance is remembered mostly for fire trucks, but it started with commercial vehicles and in the early 1920s offered trucks of up to a five-ton nominal capacity. Bus chasses were added and its trucks grew larger. By World War II it was building the massive M1 and M1A1 heavy wrecking truck as well as six-ton, six-wheel-drives for the Army.

Defense contracts enabled Ward LaFrance to emerge from the war in good condition and it broadened its range of trucks for the civilian market. While nowhere near the size of the M1 and M1A1, the new Ward LaFrances bore a resemblance to them thanks to their straight, simple lines and especially the angular fenders with their flat surfaces.

The new trucks were indeed the right move for the pent-up demand of the time, but the time proved short and with competitors also in the strong selling mode, the demand for post-war replacement trucks was gradually filled. Ward LaFrance responded with another wise decision when it decided to phase out its commercial line and focus on fire trucks, a market it had been in since the early 1930s.

With Retirement, His Thoughts Turned to a Certain Truck…

The Eagle Hose Company truck was built when everything was going well for the manufacturer and it served the borough until 1965.

Mazur began to think about that in 2009 after he retired from his education career.

“I finished up with 37 years there,” he said, “so when I finished up, I had really nothing to do. I was reading more books than I wanted to, especially in the winter, so I decided to look for this truck.”

There seemed little chance of finding the original, as he said that after the fire company sold it, the truck is believed to have ended up in either Georgia or one of the Carolinas and he checked with those states’ departments of motor vehicles.

“They had no record of any truck from up here going down there,” Mazur said, “but they did tell me—I think it was South Carolina—that if it was used on a private farm or at a camp, it would not have had to be registered. As long as they didn’t take it out on the road, it didn’t need to be registered. It could be in a barn down there, covered with a tarp, covered with some hay.”

Turning to the Internet and Email for Clues

The chances of finding another Ward LaFrance from which to clone the truck he remembered seemed better and so he started with online searches, checking the web site of the Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of Antique Motor Fire Apparatus in America (spaamfaa.org) as well as those of various fire companies.

“It almost became an obsession,” Mazur said. “Two o’clock in the morning, I’m emailing people. ‘What happened to your ’46 Ward LaFrance? I’ve seen it on the Ward LaFrance site. What exactly happened to it?’”

The “Ward LaFrance site” (wardlafrance. com) is not related to the manufacturer, which is no longer in business, but provides historical and other information on the trucks.

Among the Ward LaFrances that he found was one in Boston, where it had been housed in the Boston Fire Museum before being placed in storage. He learned from members of the Boston Sparks Association that it was unlikely to become available, but he decided to try.

“It was probably the closest truck that I could find to our ’46,” Mazur said, “and the serial numbers were only off by a couple. They were made practically at the same time.

“But obviously, they weren’t selling. They weren’t parting with it.”

With the Boston Ward LaFrance out of the picture, he resumed the hunt and located another truck. This one was at the Beemersville Fire Department in Beemersville, New Jersey, and considerably closer to home.

“It was in fairly good shape,” Mazur recalled. “It did need work, but they were debating whether to sell it or not because it needed new head gaskets for the engine. In one of the pictures, you can see that the head gaskets are lying on the running board.”

The reality proved to be not very different from that of the Ward LaFrance he’d asked about in Boston, as he learned that the Beemersville truck was probably not going to leave and if it did, it would end up in a nearby museum.

A Difficult and Frustrating Search Continues

Fortunately, his fellow members of Eagle Hose Company knew that he was looking and while some took the position that he’d never find the right Ward LaFrance, others told him to keep searching. He followed the latter group’s advice and that led him to a privately owned example with a slightly murky past. The asking price was $25,000, he said, and he finally made a connection with the local fire department so that he could find out about it.

“They emailed me,” Mazur explained, “and said ‘he doesn’t have the title to that truck.’ What happened was that the company was selling it, he wanted to buy it, but he didn’t have the money. One of the businessmen in the town lent him the money for the truck, so when he got the truck, the guy who lent him the money got the title. So now the title’s here, the truck’s there.”

The would-be seller didn’t seem to know whether the truck ran but photos showed it appearing to be in fair condition. However, the price was several times that of a comparable Ward LaFrance sold not much earlier, so Mazur moved on. That was both wise and lucky, as a fellow firefighter soon told him about yet another possibility in Glenside, Pennsylvania. There was, however, a catch.

“I went online and I found the truck,” Mazur said. “No address—just the guy’s name and the message ‘I’m looking to sell this truck as is.’”

He and his wife had already planned to visit their son in Philadelphia and they scheduled a side trip to Glenside. He still didn’t know where to find the truck or how to contact the owner, but he did have some critically important experience.

“We get into Glenside,” he said, “so where do I go? I go to the fire station.”

It was a volunteer company and since no one was around, he waited and when a mail carrier showed up, Mazur told him why he was there. The mail carrier gave him a phone number, which got him another number and finally a five-minute conversation with the seller. Mazur got a time to meet and directions.

“I saw the truck,” Mazur said, “he had it parked out front. I said to my wife ‘that is almost perfect. Something has to be wrong with it.’”

Actually, there wasn’t, as he learned that one of the seller’s big concerns was that the Ward LaFrance would be cared for properly. A New Jersey hobbyist who wanted it lacked the necessary garage space and planned to store it outside while a South Carolina museum was interested in adding the truck to its collection.

“‘You look like the kind of person who really wants the truck,’” the seller told Mazur. “‘Do you have a garage?’”

He did.

“He was talking to me for a while,” Mazur continued, “and then he said ‘I’m going to sell you the truck because I think you’ll really appreciate the truck and take care of it. As far as I’m concerned, as of now, you own the truck. When can you come and pick it up?’ I said ‘I’m not going to drive it back. I’m going to trailer it.’ He said ‘well, that’s a good idea.’”

The seller’s support for trailering almost suggests some significant problems, but it was more likely a combination of caring about it and erring on the side of caution. While a problem did show up on the test drive, Mazur couldn’t blame the truck.

“He took me to the high school,” Mazur recalled, “and he let me drive it. I said ‘I haven’t driven a standard shift in 30 years.’ He said ‘it’s easy, just jump in.’ So I ran it through first and second gear and basically, that was it. That was all I could do in the parking lot. To me, the truck seemed fine.

The seller asked whether he could keep it for a month to drive it in a parade and that gave Mazur time to arrange transportation. Chad Marushock, a friend with a flatbed trailer, and another friend, Al Caines, who owns a number of fire trucks, handled the move with him and for several reasons that was smart.

“(Caines) got in it,” Mazur said, “and it wouldn’t start. So now we had to jump it and start it and I was thinking ‘what the hell did I do?’ So now it came off of the flatbed and I noticed that there were a couple of drops of oil on the floor and I said ‘is this normal?’ He said ‘yeah, they all leak. It’s a ’47, what do you expect?’”

Neither the dead battery nor the oil leak was catastrophic, but they provided a lesson.

“If you get people who’ve been through the experiences, I think it’s easier than just going into it by yourself,” Mazur said. “I wanted somebody who knows how to get it on the trailer and get it off the trailer without tipping it over. I would’ve never put it up there.”

Starting the Truck’s Restoration

The Ward LaFrance had belonged to the Pennington Road Fire Department in Ewing, New Jersey, he said, and probably had last been in service in the 1960s. Aside from the small problems, it was still in excellent overall condition when he bought it.

His first step after it was delivered was to take it to American Fire Services in Dickson City, something he did mostly to be safe and to identify immediate requirements and potential nightmares.

“It needed a lot of general maintenance,” he said, “change the oil, change the filter, check the wiring, check the pump…and get it ready so that it looks good.”

Part of getting it to look good was addressing the paint. While the truck’s condition meant that a full restoration was unnecessary, it wasn’t perfect.

“It had to be repainted on the back end,” Mazur said. “It must have been hit at one point and when they re-sprayed it, they didn’t match the colors up correctly. When you looked at it in the sun, you could see that the color was off. I took it down to Kobierecki’s Body Shop (in Dickson City). They matched the color that was basically on the whole truck because the part where it had been (repainted) had an orange tint.”

Assessing Your Skills and the Scope of the Project

That brings up a consideration that’s important when restoring any vehicle and that’s the need to assess your skills honestly.

“Your first thing,” Mazur said, “would be ‘can I do a lot of the work myself?’ My answer to that was ‘no, I can’t,’ but I knew people who could and so that was the thing with me. I’m willing to accept the fact that I can’t do it and I’m going to have to learn to do it, but I’m also resigned to the fact that I’m going to have to pay to have some of it done.”

The plus side is that body damage on a fire truck is probably going to be mostly scrapes and dents. Like rust—at least on older examples—it won’t be hard to notice, which is something that can’t automatically be said about another key factor on a fire truck, its completeness.

While Mazur spoke of tapping expertise for the restoration work, doing so is every bit as important when it comes to determining and finding the correct equipment and accessories. He needs to find a storage box like the one mounted atop the original Ward LaFrance and plans to look for it at a flea market specializing in fire equipment, but he’s already acquired and installed some of the necessities. He’s found some of the period-correct hose and is looking for more, since there was none on the truck when he bought it.

A Helpful Addition From a Traffic Signal

He traded two lights that were on his truck for the side light that had once been on the original, but the 1946 truck’s fender skirts are apparently gone. In fact, old photos show that truck with different skirts at different times, so one might have been lost or damaged and then both were replaced. Until another pair becomes available, Mazur’s truck will get by without them, but since his plan was to clone the earlier truck, the skirts are only one aspect of the project.

Over the winter, he removed the ladders that came on his Ward LaFrance and stripped them and then refinished them to match others from the era that he was able to find. Wye adapters from the original turned up and they needed to be restored before being mounted in the correct location on his truck. (A Wye adapter allows you to run more than one line off of a single system.) He found himself with an extra piece of hard suction that he expects to eventually trade for something he needs, but replacing a broken lens on the siren light called for neither a trade nor cash.

“The problem,” Mazur said, “was that there were a couple of lenses out there, but people wanted to sell me the whole unit… for $300. I didn’t want to buy another siren for $300 because the siren on my truck works. It’s perfect. All I wanted was the lens.

“So one day, I’m coming up the boulevard in Dickson and I get stopped at the light. I’m looking at the red light and I’m thinking ‘that looks almost the same size as the lens that I need.’”

A friend who worked on traffic signals told him that old units were being replaced and gave him a red lens from one of them. Once he ground off a lip, it was a perfect fit.

“I went down and told the guys in the firehouse,” he recounted. “I said ‘you’re not going to believe it. You guys pull up to a stoplight, you sit there and you daydream. I pull up to a stoplight and I think ‘how is that going to help me to fix my truck?’”

With some parts, the only real option might be fabrication, which is what Mazur found when it came to grille bars. Another local business, Jolar Machine Shop, helped with that.

“I needed those pieces,” he said, “and I was thinking ‘where can I get these things made?’ You’re not going to pick them up, even in a junkyard. There aren’t many ’46 or ’47 Ward LaFrance fire trucks in junkyards, so I had a sample piece and I took it down to him and I said ‘can you guys do this? I need six of them’ and he said ‘let me see what I can do.’ He called me a couple of days later and said ‘I have your parts ready for you.’ I brought them back home, I took them to the truck, I put them on and they fit perfectly.”

He Takes It on the Road

Mechanical parts should be less of a problem, particularly on a Ward LaFrance or other trucks whose manufacturers purchased components from suppliers such as Waukesha and Spicer. Mazur worries about finding a replacement if some major component fails, but it doesn’t stop him from enjoying the truck. And his non-synchronized-transmission skills have improved.

“Not too bad, actually,” he said. “I really have practiced.”

His son, he said, had never driven a vehicle with a manual transmission, so lessons with the Ward LaFrance in a school parking lot helped. That’s important because another part of the plan for the truck is that he inherits it, something that’s almost certainly going to work well.

“Last winter when my son was in,” Mazur said, “January had one of the coldest days of the year. He said to me ‘Dad, let’s take the truck out.’ It was a dry day, it was a sunny day, but it was cold. I said ‘alright, we’ll take it out.’ We took it, we ran it up to Blakely, up into Peckville…and that night on the computer, I see where some guy took video of us. He was coming in the opposite direction, so he saw us coming down the street, got his camera out while he was driving. He got video of us and the caption was something like ‘the things you see riding through Peckville on a cold January day.’ It was the Ward coming down as loud as can be and going past him. My son was like ‘Dad, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe people are actually taking pictures of it.’”

His son might be surprised at the attention the truck receives and some who see it are surprised that it’s not an American LaFrance, but those who remember the original are apparently surprised for another reason.

“The comment I get now,” Mazur said, “is ‘at least your truck starts.’ That one they couldn’t trust that it was going to start.”

The firefighters dealt with that by making good use of the topography near the firehouse.

“They would push it out and aim it down the boulevard and they would push it to get it started in gear,” Mazur said. “Now it was started and they’d turn it around in a parking lot and head back up the boulevard to get to the fire.”