Jim has been in Emergency Services for over 50 years. Starting on ski patrol in New Hampshire, he then became an EMT and founded Cape Cod Ambulance Service, and later becoming a firefighter. He has served in Volunteer, Paid on Call and Career positions. Jim was a founding member of IAFF Local 3702. He and his son Christopher now reside in Vermont and both are still running fire calls on local departments.

As the inventor of HOZE DOLLY, Jim is committed to making the FIREFIGHTER’s job easier and safer.

After injuring his own back, lifting an iced caked roll of LDH, onto the Crew Cab deck, he found himself actively avoiding carrying LDH rolls back to the engine for reloading. Jim tried to find a device for handling LDH that would eliminate the need to lift the nearly 100lb rolls, would be readily available on the fire ground, would be light weight, collapsible for on-apparatus storage and would be affordable enough to have one on multiple rigs assuring rapid deployment where and when needed.

His search was unsuccessful, BUT then, he had an idea. What if he combined a dollying device with a turn table, similar to the one used for reloading hose at the station. Not only would it eliminate lifting the heavy LDH rolls but it would also allow a controlled uncoiling of the LDH rolls for reloading onto the hose-bed. This would eliminate the awkward and cumbersome methods currently in practice to uncoil the rolls during reloading.

AND, SO HOZE DOLLY WAS BORN.

Making it collapsible was the greatest challenge. Jim and his engineer went around and around on this. The engineer maintained that, if collapsible, it would cost a fortune to manufacture, instead recommending we make it a fixed static tool. However, Jim steadfastly insisted that it be collapsible, repeatedly asserting that if it is not collapsible it won’t be stored on the apparatus. If it is not on the apparatus, it won’t be used and will just collect dust back at the station.

Jim’s goal was to make HOZE DOLLY the GO TO tool anytime LDH was being relocated. To become that, HOZE DOLLY needed to be readily available on the fire ground, easily accessible, and rapidly deployable by a single firefighter. Sure, retrieving a hose handling device from the station might be justified for 5 or 6 lengths of LDH, but doing so is way too inconvenient for just one or two lengths. Consequently, most firefighters would just cowboy up and manually carry the one or two rolls back to the engine.

HOWEVER, IT IS EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT TO NOTE that it takes only one roll to cause a back injury.