FLEET CONTRACT OVERVIEW · DEPLOYABLE WORKFORCE HOUSINGPREPARED JUL 2026 · WORKING DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION
50 Duplexes · 100 Beds · Contract-Ready
The beds are guaranteed. So is the payment.
A purpose-built fleet of 50 deliverable duplex units — owned outright, contracted directly with the U.S. wildland fire service, and operated day-to-day by a dedicated operations partner. One annual payment secures 100 days of capacity; every day above that is billed only as used.
100
Beds · 50 duplex units
$1.1M
Annual upfront payment · 100-day guarantee
~5 yrs
Contract term · runs to fleet payoff
The problem on the ground
U.S. wildland fire service · high season
In high season the U.S. wildland fire service fields at minimum 10,000 — and routinely more than 30,000 — firefighters on active incidents. The majority sleep on the ground between 16-hour shifts: in personal tents when they have them, often on a tarp and a sleeping bag when they don't — for weeks at a time, while mental-health strain and suicide rates in the profession climb. The data and the camp photos are further down this page.
“Every firefighter deserves a bed to sleep in, a place to shower, and privacy.”
That is the standard the fire service wants to build toward, and it is the problem this fleet exists to solve. The service guarantees the first 100 deployment days of every contract year — and recent fire seasons have run well past 100 days. Because the units are fully mobile, off-season deployments to other clients stack on top of the guarantee as additional upside.
Today — crews on the ground
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Drag to compare · concept rendering — the same camp, re-equipped
How the deal is built
Three parties · clean lanes
The fleet owner holds the homes and the contract. Nothing is subleased, nothing is borrowed from a third-party fleet — the counterparty contracts directly with the entity that owns the asset.
Fleet Owner
Owns the homes · holds the contract
Owns all 50 duplexes outright and contracts directly with the U.S. wildland fire service. Responsible for providing the units: insured, maintained to return-condition standard, and deployment-ready every season.
Operations Partner
Contracts & operations
Brings the deployment contracts and services the operational side — mobilization, camp operations, day-to-day management in the field. The logistics arm of the partnership.
Cocoon Homes
Manufacturer
Builds the fleet: duplex units built to residential standards with full deliverable capability — engineered for repeat transport and rapid siting. Supplies the fleet at a committed manufacturer concession below retail.
OPERATIONS PARTNER SOURCES & OPERATES → FLEET OWNER PROVIDES THE UNITS & HOLDS THE CONTRACT → COCOON BUILDS
Fleet acquisition
55 units · manufacturer concession
Retail price per duplex$101,750
Fleet price per duplex (committed)$86,500
Manufacturer concession — 15%− $15,250
Total fleet acquisition · 50 duplexes (100 beds)$4,325,000
$762,500 fleet-wide concession. Cocoon supplies the fleet at 15% below retail — a committed manufacturer position in the program, not a volume discount that expires.
Why it matters to the counterparty: the fleet's cost basis sets the lease economics. A 15% lower basis is what holds the bed-day rate at $110 and keeps the contract term short — the program isn't carrying retail markup through the financing.
Built for this work: residential-standard duplexes on steel trailer chassis, designed for repeated mobilization — transportable, durable in field conditions, and returnable to service between seasons without rebuild-level refurbishment.
Return-condition standard: units are inspected against a documented condition standard at each demobilization, with a security holdback covering restoration — the fleet a crew moves into in year five is the fleet from year one.
The revenue engine
100 days guaranteed · overage billed as used
One upfront annual payment — $1,100,000 — secures the first 100 deployment days across all 100 beds. It's paid at the start of each contract year, before the season begins. Days above 100 are billed at the same $110 per bed-day, only as they're used — and off-season deployments to other clients stack on top. Drag the season.
The contract runs until the fleet financing is retired in full — then it's done. The note pays interest only: no scheduled principal payments, no balloon. Instead, 100% of operating profit goes to principal until the note is repaid in full, so stronger seasons shorten the term. The upfront payment alone covers the year's interest before a single crew deploys.
5 YRS
Projected contract term at 130 days/season
Fleet financing$4,325,000
Fixed coupon — editable%
Year-1 debt service$346,000
Upfront pmt ÷ Yr-1 debt service3.2×
PaymentsInterest only
Amortization100% of profit → principal
Balloon paymentNone
FLEET FINANCING BALANCE, END OF EACH CONTRACT YEAR · EMBER BAR = FINAL YEAR OF TERM
After the note
What the program becomes
Year 6+
Fleet owned free and clear
The financing is gone and the fleet remains — 55 field-proven duplexes with an established deployment history and an operating partnership already in place.
$1.46M / yr
Ongoing net capacity income
Post-payoff, fleet revenue net of carrying costs flows unencumbered — capacity that can stay in wildfire response or extend to disaster and workforce programs.
$3.3M
Fleet residual value at payoff
Straight-line 7%/yr depreciation on acquisition cost — a conservative book view of a fleet maintained to return-condition standard.
Investor waterfall — optional structure. Beyond return of principal, the structure allows for additional waterfall payments to the investor out of the fleet's ongoing income — trading favorable interest terms up front for a share in the program's long-term success. Waterfall terms, if elected, are defined in definitive documents.
The window — why this pilot, why now
Federal budget reset · FY2027–FY2028
Federal wildland fire is being restructured right now. The U.S. Wildland Fire Service was formally established inside the Department of the Interior in January 2026, and over the next one to three budget cycles Congress will decide the new service's structure, its budget, and how that budget is spent — including firefighter housing, which is already named in the service's own budget justification. Fire service leadership has been direct: this trial phase must prove the concept before that budget is set.
2025
Proposed
Administration proposes a consolidated U.S. Wildland Fire Service; executive order directs DOI and USDA to consolidate wildland fire programs.
2026
Established & studied
USWFS formally established within DOI. Congress orders an independent study on full consolidation — the evidence window this pilot feeds.
FY27
The budget fight
The FY2027 request again seeks a fully consolidated service — roughly $6.9B for federal wildland fire. Congress is deciding now.
2027
The forcing function
The multi-billion-dollar wildfire suppression reserve fund expires Sept 30, 2027. Congress must rewrite how federal wildfire is funded — structure and allocations get reset.
100 BEDS
This pilot — the proof of concept
10,000+
Firefighters the service has signaled it wants in beds
5,000+
Duplex builds at full program scale — 100× this fleet
If the pilot performs through the trial window, the service's stated direction is beds for its deployed force at scale — a program two orders of magnitude beyond this fleet. Scale figures reflect the service's signaled intent, not a committed contract; what this raise buys is the operating proof, the direct contract relationship, and first position in that program before the budget is written.
Model levers
Built like homes, because they are
Cocoon build quality
These are not converted trailers or camp shells. Cocoon builds to residential standards with deliverable capability: conventional wood-framed homes on steel trailer chassis, with residential doors, windows, and finishes — standing-seam metal roofs, dedicated mini-split climate control on every unit, and running gear engineered for repeated transport. The fleet's duplex sleeper units are purpose-configured for crew rest, built to the same standard shown here.
The duplex sleeper layout: two fully private units per build, each with its own entrance, kitchen, bed, and private bath (concept floor plan)
Deliverable by designWood-framed homes on steel trailer chassis — built to mobilize, deploy, and return year after year without rebuild-level wear.
Climate-controlledEvery unit carries its own mini-split heating and cooling — a consistent sleeping temperature in July heat or October cold.
Residential standardsReal doors, real windows, insulated walls, finished interiors — a home a crew member walks into, not a container they're assigned to.
Who this fleet serves
Photos from a working fire camp
Wildland firefighters work 16-hour shifts on the line — and then sleep on the ground. The nearest real bed is often a motel 1.5 to 2 hours away, far enough that crews routinely skip it just to bank more sleep. Shower lines at camp can run hours; days pass without one. And a large share of every incident is worked overnight — those crews come off the line at dawn and try to sleep through the day, in a tent, in summer heat and full daylight, with a camp operating around them. It is not an environment built for real sleep. The photos below are a working incident camp. This is the standard the job currently offers the people doing it.
16 HRS
A standard shift on the line
1.5–2 HRS
Drive to the nearest motel bed
HOURS
Waiting in line for a shower
DAYS
Between showers on assignment
Crew tents on open ground below the highway — sleep after a 16-hour shiftPersonal tents pitched at the edge of the vehicle lot — daytime sleep for night crews happens hereThe sanitation line and water tenders — camp infrastructure on bare dirtHandwash stations and pin flags marking home for the deploymentSoft-sided shelters with ducted air — the current best case in the fieldField power distribution — the infrastructure it takes to run a camp on open ground
This is bigger than comfort
1 IN 5
Reported suicidal ideation in the past year
2–10×
Depression, anxiety & PTSD vs. general population
5–8×
Higher odds of those screens among firefighters with insomnia
> LODD
More firefighters die by suicide than in the line of duty
In the largest national survey of U.S. wildland firefighters to date, 17% screened positive for depression and roughly 14% for probable PTSD — and one in five reported suicidal ideation within the past year. Across conditions, rates run two to ten times the general population.
Sleep sits near the center of it. Firefighters with insomnia show roughly five to eight times higher odds of screening positive for depression, anxiety, and PTSD, and researchers describe poor sleep and mental-health strain as a cycle — each making the other worse. Housing does not treat any of this. But sleep is one of the few conditions a deployment program actually controls, and a dark, quiet, climate-controlled bed minutes from the line is the most direct sleep intervention a camp can make.
SOURCES: NATIONAL SURVEY OF 2,625 U.S. WILDLAND FIREFIGHTERS (O'BRIEN, 2021) · FIREFIGHTER BEHAVIORAL HEALTH ALLIANCE · PEER-REVIEWED FIREFIGHTER SLEEP & MENTAL-HEALTH STUDIES (CARLETON ET AL., 2021)
100 real beds, minutes from the incident — climate-controlled, quiet, and dark at any hour, so day crews recover overnight and night crews can actually sleep through the day. Crew recovery stops being the cost of the job and becomes part of the operation.
