Service truck bodies

[Randy88]

Theironoracle, I finally got some photos to upload, I have more but I can't seem to get them to load right now for some reason, if any of them did you any good let me know, every component is bolted on, both sets of tall side boxes can be switched from one side of the truck to the other, same as the welder cabinet, and stack of drawers, as can the under mount boxes behind the wheels. The white box is my tool box I've had for over 20 years and had on several truck before this one, its based on the montazuma boxes, only larger and the lid opens and hinges down instead of up and the lid is used for a work platform, same as the welder box, that also opens up and lays down flat. All boxes are water tight, just by design, even though it doesn't look like they would be, but not dust tight, to do it over again, I'd have pressurized the boxes to make them dust tight, but for me its good enough, there are no gaskets on any of the doors to make them water tight either, all boxes can be locked. I never got my crane design worked out before I needed the body, so it never got put together or put on the truck, after all these years, I'd rather have a mobile crane anyhow. If there's anything you need or want to know, just ask, I'll do my best to answer them for you. This box can be mounted on any truck from a single axle semi on up, all I have to do is unbolt the back under mount boxes and bolt them someplace else if need be, only the frame width is important, we built it that way, nothing to torch off and change, just unbolt and move.

The box is also not directly bolted onto the body, it is set on spring mounts, and flexes as the truck does, that way it won't fatigue crack over time, a must for where I drive in and around farms, and jobsites, most are bolted directly onto the truck frame or as they call them rigid mounts. After over 10 years of hard use, I've never had to fix a thing on the bed, we just keep adding stuff to it as we need it is all.

If you don't like the drawer setup, I also have a completely different setup that has no rollers whatsoever to mess with, the drawers just swivel in and out, nothing to wear out or fix, I can take some pictures of that too. For a truck I do like these style of drawers, I've had over 800 lbs on a drawer before and it never bothered it, I'm not sure how much weight they'd take before breaking, but you couldn't give me anything with rollers on them and I don't care how great they are supposed to be. I know these pull somewhat harder than a roller drawer, but I'm not sure how much harder, nobody's really complained about it though.

 

[Dualie]

Highway products in Oregon makes an aluminum service body thats pretty damn nice and they will custom build. Not the cheapest solution but it wont rust.

I might have them build my next welding truck bed.

 

[Randy88]

Mitch, the drawer slides are made of steel and lined with an angle plastic piece thats bolted to the steel angle iron, as for how hard they pull, I oil the slides and the difficulty they pull depends on how heavy they are loaded, the bottom drawer on the passengers side is full of steel spacer plates for my trencher, to change the width of cut, has to be in the 200-300 lbs of stuff which pulls harder but not bad, thats the drawer my wife pulls out every time she needs to use the air hose, she stands on it to reach the hose reel. As for how to build them, its really simple, the drawers themselves are three piece, the bottom, and both sides are bent one piece steel, the back is just cut to fit, the same as the front but the front has a lip bent onto the top for a drawer pull, or if your doing it yourself, just weld an angle iron onto it, then weld the front and back in, simple as all get out. The drawers on the passenger side I had the guy who built the body make, the 12 on the other side, the same guy cut, sheared and bent everything up, and I took the entire pile home and welded together myself, took to have dipped and assembled the parts after dipping, I remember exactly how much that set of drawers cost, those were 1400 bucks in a pile of parts to weld together, I did the rest. I was thinking the other stack was something like 100 bucks a drawer if I recall plus the box.

I'd have done it all myself but I was so busy at the time, it still wouldn't be done, so I just found the guy that did it for me and that way I have had the last decade or so of use out of it, to do it over again, I could have saved about half the cost to do it myself from start to finish, but when your busy 7 days a week from dawn till dark, plus travel on top of that, you tend not to have much free time for doing anything but get stuff ready to go for the next day.

If your having problems with a drawer design, I'll try to upload any pictures you want, I also have another drawer design that not quite as simple, but with some adaptation, would be far easier to open over any roller setup, they are mounted on a swivel shaft and just swing out and back in, for a shop drawer on a cabnet I just love them, am planning on making a large roll table with drawers under it for my now completed shop, I could take a few pictures of them for you too so you can see how they work, but are somewhat harder to build and require some more welding to put them together. For an all around drawer to be used abused and beat around, the one's on my truck are by far the simpliest I've ever been around and seen, I had the drawer design and the guy doing the building had the plastic liner idea the drawer slides on. I'd built a smaller drawer setup years back, 20 plus years ago now, that had the drawer bottom stick past the edge of the drawer and slide between two angle irons, it took more to build and for some reason was harder to slide in and out, not because of weight but it had to go in absolutely straight, this design has a rounded at the bottom edge of the drawer and works perfectly. The old design had a top lid that lifted up and the whole front dropped down on a chain and wasn't water tight or snow tight, then the drawers would freeze in, this setup snow or water never get into the box at all, its just flat steel, on flat steel locked with the pipe arm, I swore it would leak at least water, but it really doesn't, besides the drawers are recessed into the box further past the pull lip on the drawer, and water would only drip straight down, never blow into the drawer, but the hinges are bought from a supplier and then cut up and have the pipe welded onto it to make them work for my drawers.

Any steel supplier or steel fabricating shop can do the drawers for you, but I'd just order them bent from the steel yard if I were to do some more.

If your going to ever hot dip galvanize them, you have to do it components, you can't complete the body and then dip it, you'll end up with a twisted mangled mess, just how it works when dipping, only the subframe is one piece, everything else is bolted together, something I wasn't excited about till I've been using it, now I'd never have one built any other way.

As for aluminum not rusting, that's it only good trait, but its other traits would deter me from ever wanting a service body built out of aluminum. A buddy of mine has had two brand new aluminum body's in the last three years, the first was in an accident and dinged the front compartment, which in turn totalled the body, someone bought it out of salvage to rebuild, a really bad idea, now he has a junk body that's tweeked and nothing opens and no drawer slides work right, and none of the doors seal out rain, not to mention the fatigue cracking they are plagued with, if you stay on a level concrete highway and never drive offroad, maybe, but for the average service body, I wouldn't take aluminum if it was free, also aluminum doesn't rust, it rots when exposed to road salt and wear and needs to be plated with new aluminum to be fixed, just my opinion on that subject, also most aluminum body's have a steel substructure of some sort to add strength to the body to make them work, where they are bolted together causes a lot of grief, some of the smaller body's are completely built out of aluminum and those I'd not buy either, seen quite a few with broken main frames from fatigue, which in turn tweeks the rest of the body and things don't line up.

 

[markshr151]

What is the cost of dipping?

 

[Randy88]

In my area anyhow, I deal with two different places both owned by the same company independantly run though, they weight the product after dipping and the cost is about 30 cents a pound for the acid wash, predip and hot dipped, so there is no prep on my portion of the job, rust, oil, grease, doesn't matter, as it comes out of the shop it goes to dip and comes back done, or for a piece weighing 1000 lbs its about 300 bucks plus my time and trucking to get to and from the dip place. The 12 drawer box and drawers on the drivers side weighed far less than a 1000 lbs to give an idea of what it cost to dip the entire box, drawers and all, there's no way on earth I'm ever going to clean, prep, paint multiple coats of paint for the cost of dipping and once done, unless its ground off, its good for a lot longer than I'll ever wear it out, paint lasts about 5 years before it starts to rust through in my area with all the salt on the roads. If I have a lot larger piece to dip, or many pieces, they do have a better price than the 30 cents a pound, it may have changed a little, its been a couple of years since I had something dipped. There are a few major name brand trailers now offering dipped frames on their lowboys, and its about time someone did, if I ever live long enough to get mine stripped to the frame and do a major rebuild on it, that's what I'm going to do too, unless I win the lotto and can go buy new already done.

 

[dabsfabs]

Can I ask a seemly silly question about the service truck you guys use in USA, do you have to have a HGV and operators licences to run your services trucks. As feeling a bit inadquate with my ford transit van.

 

[kiall1987]

Can I ask a seemly silly question about the service truck you guys use in USA, do you have to have a HGV and operators licences to run your services trucks. As feeling a bit inadquate with my ford transit van.

Am I feel the same envy ! but as you know dadsfabs over here you would be so limited with your driving time that it wouldnt work out

 

[mitch504]

No guess what an HGV is but many of the service trucks here do require a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) though the ones w/ a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating from the manufacturer below 26,000 lbs (57200 kgs) don't unless we are pulling a trailer over 10000 lbs (22,000 kgs) GVWR

It always amazes me how y'all can work out of such small trucks, you must pretty well know what you are going to do to what machine when you leave the shop. Even though I work out of a fairly small truck by american standards, (16,000 GVWR 9' service body) I can guarantee that the guys driving the biggest trucks on here don't have enough space. There's always something more you want to carry. :beatsme

 

[kiall1987]

No guess what an HGV is but many of the service trucks here do require a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) though the ones w/ a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating from the manufacturer below 26,000 lbs (57200 kgs) don't unless we are pulling a trailer over 10000 lbs (22,000 kgs) GVWR

It always amazes me how y'all can work out of such small trucks, you must pretty well know what you are going to do to what machine when you leave the shop. Even though I work out of a fairly small truck by american standards, (16,000 GVWR 9' service body) I can guarantee that the guys driving the biggest trucks on here don't have enough space. There's always something more you want to carry. :beatsme

HGV is heavy good vehicle , but they are also limited to 40 hrs weeks driving that would include working time ie 2 hour driving and 6 hours working would still use 8 hours of your driving time

 

[Randy88]

Dabsfabs, its not a silly question at all, I'll ask a silly question, what's a HGV.

 

[Randy88]

Ok now that we know what it means, can anyone tell me what's the difference between a HGV and a small pickup as far as hours you can work

 

[mitch504]

Wow, and I thought our driving hours restrictions were a pain 11 hrs driving /day, 14 hrs total work/day, 72 hrs/ week

 

[kiall1987]

Hgv is 40 hrs a week , a large pickup over would be still classed a Hgv aswell and the same rules apply to that . And the weight of a service van here is very low , I have a Ford transit and its 3.5 tonne and that's pushing my luck with that . So picking what you want to have in the van is hard so you sometime have to pick welder over compressor of vice versus . Of course carry all the hand tools from 1/4 to 1" drive , special tools , filters , consumables , lifting gear etc etc

 

[Randy88]

So is there no hour restrictions on the service van's then or personal vehicles you would carry tools in, and why the restrictions on hours in the first place for mechanics?

 

[kiall1987]

Not at the moment their isnt so I can work all day and drive all over no problem so 7 days a week 12-14 hour shifts if need be . But if a ran a vehicle same as yours I would have to get a hgv/cdl license , work to the strict times and say i was 5 miles from home and ran out of time i would have to pull in a layby etc and parkup for the night .

So we miss alot extras like cranes , carrying alot of extra tool/equipment and we do the same work sometimes just a little more awkward way !

 

[donkey doctor]

HGV is heavy good vehicle , but they are also limited to 40 hrs weeks driving that would include working time ie 2 hour driving and 6 hours working would still use 8 hours of your driving time

So if you worked 40 hours in the shop Mon to Fri you couldn't drive to a field service job on the weekend ? d.d.

 

[kiall1987]

So if you worked 40 hours in the shop Mon to Fri you couldn't drive to a field service job on the weekend ? d.d.

Yup , you also can work a weekend job in another place either if you were a hgv driver

 

[Shenandoah]

No guess what an HGV is but many of the service trucks here do require a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) though the ones w/ a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating from the manufacturer below 26,000 lbs (57200 kgs) don't unless we are pulling a trailer over 10000 lbs (22,000 kgs) GVWR

Mitch, your conversion rates are a tad backwards. 26,000 lbs is 11793.4 kgs and 10,000 lbs is 4,536 kgs. You'll never make a good DOT cop...

 

[mitch504]

Mitch, your conversion rates are a tad backwards. 26,000 lbs is 11793.4 kgs and 10,000 lbs is 4,536 kgs. You'll never make a good DOT cop...

:Banghead

Umm, let's see... ummm, I know I can think of a good excuse... umm.. OH, I KNOW!

My wife's cat walked on the keyboard, yeah, that's it:notworthy

 

[K-W]

The dealership I work for bought me a new Autocrane Titan 60 last December, with a 10006H crane. I absolutely love the crane and can't stand the box! There is no primer under the paint, so the paint chips off and rust sets in right away! The weather stripping on the doors leak and the latches they use are terrible, some flop open going down the road and others you have to beat shut with a hammer!

If I was buying a truck for myself, I'd be taking a hard look at the Brutus Bodies. I haven't seen one in person but from what I've seen on their web site, they look like they were designed by somebody who actually spent a day or two in the field!