If there are two hallmarks of Russian vehicles, toughness and simplicity come to mind. This simply awesome Ural-4320 based tracked fire truck has both the toughness and simplicity aspects handled spades. There are obviously large swaths of Russia that live in near arctic conditions for lots of the year. Because of that, equipment is necessary to respond to fires, emergencies, and catastrophes no matter the weather and ground conditions. This rig is designed to travel over everything but water in order to get to a scene and it absolutely dominates the snow as you will see in the video below.
As best we can tell, this is a Ural-4320 truck. It is a total workhorse that has been in production since 1976. Not a ton has changed since then other than the placement of the headlights and some advancements in basic systems like steering and braking. The trucks are used for every conceivable job in the army including as a base for a rocket launcher. On the civilian side you can see these things are dump trucks, garbage haulers, and all the other yeoman work that keeps the population moving. It sounds to us that this one is powered by the diesel V8 engine. The other option is a diesel V6 but this one seems to have the V8 noise.
The trucks are geared like bulldozers and can run about 50mph wide open. We’re not sure if the tracked truck can run that fast and frankly it is designed to tackle terrain where 50 wouldn’t even be possible in a hovercraft so we’re guessing that the tank tracks have not been speed tested to that point.
Judging by all the cabinets and doors on the bed as well as what looks to be a big generator/pump motor behind the cab, this thing is fully equipped to attack a fire, crash, or whatever it comes upon. We’re guessing that there is an on board water tank that carries 500 or so gallons of water that can be used to lead the attack on a fire. Specs are hard to come by on the fire fighting rig but the truck itself is a time proven commodity.
If there is one country that gets the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” motto it is Russia. That works pretty good when we’re talking about trucks!
Better be a really s l o w burning fire!