Thanks to our partner, the Greensboro Firefighters History Book Committee, additional photographs of Greensboro Fire Department individuals, stations, trucks; copy of the Spring 1979 North Carolina Professional Fire Fighter magazine, photographs of industry buildings in the city, and more are now available on DigitalNC! Featured in this batch are photographs of the Department’s yellow fire trucks.
In the early 1970s, studies reported that yellow fire trucks were more visible than red ones. Following the publication of these studies, yellow fire trucks began to appear on streets in cities such as Greensboro. Unfortunately, painting the trucks didn’t actually improve people’s awareness of them, but instead caused an increase in vehicular accidents. This was a result of the color’s association with utility company vehicles which led to less people registering the yellow fire trucks as emergency vehicles. Later, a different study was published that found that red and white were more associated with emergency vehicles, making yellow officially out as the color of future fire trucks.
The Greensboro Fire Department had several yellow fire trucks in use from in the 1970s. However, in the late 1980s, Chief W. Frank Jones declared the department’s trucks would be returning to red, saying, “fire trucks are supposed to be red, from what children say.” The yellow fire trucks continued to be used until they had to be replaced.
Information about the yellow fire trucks was gathered from page 60 of the September 23, 1990 issue of Greensboro News & Record along with previous Greensboro Firefighters History Book Committee batch materials.
To view more materials from the Greensboro Firefighters History Book Committee, please visit their contributor page linked here.
To learn more about the Greensboro Firefighters History Book Committee, please visit their website linked here.
