PILOT MOUNTAIN — The top of Pilot Knob Volunteer Fire Department’s new tanker doesn’t look like the typical tanker truck. That’s because there isn’t anything typical about it.

The 2009 International 7600 vacuum tanker will be replacing the department’s 1979 Chevrolet tanker, a conventional model.

According to Fire Chief James DeHart, the new truck, which cost the department just less than $270,000, will carry 2,850 gallons of water, where the 1979 carried 1,200 gallons.

Another big difference is the way the vacuum truck picks up and dispenses water, which is also the reason the truck looks slightly different.

Most conventional tankers are just large tanks on the chassis of a truck to haul the water and then the water is either flows into a drop tank, which looks like a large pool set up on rural fire scenes, or pumped directly into a pumper truck, which in turn sends the water into the fire hoses.

The vacuum truck works similar to a septic truck, and sucks the water up and then blows it back out at high rates of speed, DeHart explained.

“There are less than a dozen in the state,” he said. “It is not a normal fire truck. It is an oversized vacuum like is on a septic truck.

“We are able to get water from places we can’t normally get water with a traditional truck, because it will suck it up,” he said. “It is going to almost double our water we can pull up.”

“We’ve drafted out of places with only 6 inches of water that we normally couldn’t pull from,” the chief said.

In testing the new truck, the department has been able to draw a load as quick as two minutes, 13 seconds. The longest draw time is seven minutes, but that was a vertical lift in 6 inches of water.

“My biggest thing is instead of having to set up a whole station to get water, this will help during the day, because one man can pull the hose out, hook it up and flip a switch and be sucking water,” DeHart said.

Typically, fire departments have to set up water points with portable pumps or pump trucks to pump the water out of a pond, creek, or other water source, and flow it into the tankers which are hauling water to the fire scene and then releasing it into the drop tank or onto the pumper. With the new truck, no water point set-up is required.

“It is quicker than driving back to the closest fire hydrant to get water,” DeHart said.

Contact Wendy Byerly Wood at wbyerly-wood@mtairynews.com or 719-1923.