REC Start

Welcome to the Roscommon Equipment Center! REC, a cooperative program between the National Association of State Foresters and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, develops and tests equipment for wildland fire control. It is located at the Forest Fire Experiment Station, Roscommon, Michigan. Founded in 1972, REC specializes in the conversion of U.S. Military vehicles to wildland fire suppression units. It also focuses on the equipment development needs of state and local wildfire forces.


REC designed a 900 gallon Wildland Fire Engine on a 2.5 Ton 6x6 chassis.	REC conducting a vehicle test.

REC News includes updates on current work and past REC newsletters. This page is updated periodically.

Project List displays a list of past and proposed Roscommon projects. Links are provided directly to online reports, if available, or to a project report summary if it is published on paper only.

Report Summaries has a brief description of each project report. The projects are listed starting with the most recent. Newsnote pamphlets are listed last. If you want to browse through our offerings, try starting here. Online reports have links from these summaries as well.

Online Reports lists REC Project Reports available for reading or downloading from this site. Most require free Adobe Acrobat Reader software for viewing. A software download link is available on this page.

Wildland Engines contains guidelines for converting trucks and other vehicles to wildland fire engines. It includes important engineering considerations, available resources, and an online calculator for estimating the vehicle weight prior to fabrication.

FEPP Issues is a series of technical shorts related to converting Federal Excess Personal Property (FEPP) to fire equipment. Here you can find additional safety information about modifying U.S. Military equipment and a link to military vehicle parts dealers.

FEPP Links provides hyperlinks to sites that may be useful to those using FEPP. It includes U.S. Military technical sites, dealers of military vehicle parts, and other places related to this topic.

REC Virtual exhibits 3-Dimensional files of current Roscommon designs. Rotate, zoom, and flip the model to gain insight into hidden aspects of the design. This site requires a VRML viewer, a computer with more than average memory, and a fast internet connection to reduce file download time.