New York’s Bravest Firefighters Race These Bizarre Trucks In One Of The Coolest Competitions On The Planet

Remember in elementary school, when your teacher made your class write down what they wanted to be when they grew up? It’s been a few decades, but I seem to recall many dreams of being firefighters or race car drivers. Both are pretty cool professions, but what if you could do both at the same time? Welcome to the purpose-built fire trucks of Firematic racing, arguably the motorsports jewel of New York State.

Given how firefighters pride themselves on response time, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that competitions exist for various teams to flex their skills. How quickly they can deploy and scale a ladder, run hoses, and such. In New York, these competitions are overseen by the New York State Volunteer Firemen’s Parade and Drill Team Captains Association, and these sorts of drills have been going on for over a century. While foot-based competitions are still an important part of the challenge, the past century or so has seen some incredibly specialized competition fire engines come into play.

Let’s start with the Class B fire trucks. These are essentially hot-rodded V8 pickups specially modified to both pump water and get teams from the starting line to the point of ladder deployment lickety-split. From the front, they look like familiar classic models, but they sport huge running boards and custom drop decks designed for external riders.

If that isn’t crazy enough for you, have a gander at the Class C fire trucks, which don’t really look like trucks. Instead, they’re bonkers purpose-built racers with custom frames and open front wheels, looking more like a dirt modified chassis than anything seen down at your local fire station. Thanks to big slicks and big power, these things can reach up to 80 MPH in the short sprint to the line, with drill crews hanging off the back. Considering the track length for the C-Ladder competition is only 475 feet, that’s a reasonably quick launch and some proper deceleration whilst riding on the outside of a race car. Bonkers.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the competitions themselves than stupid-quick purpose-built fire trucks. Hose racing involves a motorized sprint to a hydrant, where one team member gets dropped off and connects a hose while another helps guide it. The trucks then tear off down the track, unrolling the hose until the limit of usable hose length is reached. The team members remaining on the truck then hop off and split duties, one disconnecting the extra length of hose that isn’t used and the other fitting a nozzle to blast a target to stop the timer. Think pit-crew levels of precision.

 

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Ladder racing is equally bonkers because the finish line is about 25 feet in the air. Each truck takes off and stops under an arch, at which point the team on the back hops off. Three team members deploy a 25-foot speed ladder, and one team member has to scale the ladder and grab the top rung of the ladder in order to stop the clock. In the fastest Class C trucks, the whole thing’s over in under ten seconds, including deploying and scaling the ladder. It’s one serious spectacle to watch.

Given how firematic racing or drill team racing exists for glory and bragging rights, you’d probably expect just a handful of meets every year, right? Nope. Eighteen motorized events are on this year’s schedule from early June to Labor Day. That’s the same number of races as the 2008 Formula 1 world championship. So, if you’re in New York State this summer, think racing-spec fire engines sound badass because they are, and want something to do, check out Firematic racing. It rules just as hard as you’d think it would.

Top graphic image: YouTube/NYS FD Drill Teams