Connection between Ottawa Truck and Hahn?

[Aaronw]

A local builder Beck used to use both Hahn's 92 chassis and Ottawa Truck's fire chassis.

I have never seen anything to tie Hahn to Ottawa, but as far as I can tell the two used the same chassis. Possibly different under the skin but the cabs are identical. Did Ottawa build chassis for Hahn, or perhaps Ottawa bought the rights to Hahn's chassis when Hahn went under, or maybe they both sourced the cab from the same third party? (TCM seems likely if that is the case).

Anyway I've always been curious about that as the cab has a very distinct look, no way you can mistake it for any of the other 80s box style cabs.


Kern county was a good customer of Beck using both Hahn and Ottawa chassis.

I believe this is an Ottawa, as Kern County's Hahn chassis Becks seem to have been canopy cabs.

[GA_Dave]

Short answer: No.

 

Beginning around 1972, Hahn customs were built in the Hahn factory.  While they built Hahn customs and sold them to Beck, there was no direct connection to Ottawa.  If you compare photos of Hahn and Ottawa rigs closely, they are not as similar as you might think at first glance.  The outer curve of the windshield are similar, but the Hahn had separate two-piece windshields and the Ottawa shared a center seam.  Where the cab face met the roof was similar in design, it was not exactly the same.  Cab doors and door windows were different as well.

[Aaronw]

Well then I suspect that somebody at Ottawa must have really dug the Hahn cab, maybe an ex Hahn designer or somebody on the design team was a volunteer FF who had a Hahn at their station.

You are right there are some differences if you look closely and know what to look for, but the similarity is amazing right don to the quad headlight cluster. Most of the differences could be passed off as evolution of the cab if one didn't know they were not related.

It gets even weirder here in California since Beck, a fairly small regional builder pretty much only used Hahn or Ottawa for their custom chassis rigs.

Thanks for the info