This vintage training video from the early 1950s was used by the Los Angeles Fire Department as a tool to train tillermen. What’s a tillerman? He’s the guy that drives the rear axle of the ladder on a super long fire truck of course. In large cities, having a tillerman meant that a big ladder truck could negotiate tight corners because the guy driving the back axle could swing it in ways it never would simply following the engine around corners. There’s few things above “be a tillerman for a day” on our personal bucket list.

A few of the things to notice in these videos are all the great 1950s cars shown throughout, the totally spectacular Pierce-Arrow ladder truck, and just how hairy being a tillerman, especially back then, seems to be.The huge steering wheel, the fact that you literally steer the opposite way that every bone in your body is telling you to steer, and the reality that a mistake would be completely catastrophic for both the firemen on the truck mean that this is serious business.

Our favorite part? When they instruct the tillerman to use “common” hand signals to tell pedestrians to get the hell out of the way when the ladder is coming at them! There was no PA on the outside of the truck of fancy pants modern horns to hit so the best the guy could really do was yell and scream and wave his hands (when they weren’t wrestling with the non-power assisted wheel. We’re sure more than one close call was recorded over the years and more than one car parked on the wrong place on a tight corner got a face full of ladder up in its business.

Tell us that driving one of these things would be an all-time experience!