Too Hot To Handle?

There's nothing like a gas can next to the HOT message, or the melting tennis shoes. But, hey, there's always the fire extinguisher close at hand. No worries, mate!

Great Looking Contractor from Carter Industries

Here's a great looking contractor body from Carter Industries. The boxes are made of aluminum treadplate and have a distinct look. This is a 10' unit on a 60"CA dually, yet they have the full size 8' boxes like they put on the 12' on this unit. I think that makes it very useful by carrying about the same amount, yet the maneuverability is much better with the shorter turning radius. That's a great combination of assets.

This one has a nice finishing touch of having stainless steel pieces on top of the rack bars as shown in the photo. Nice touch. The tall boxes are very useful as well and the lids are nice and light since they are aluminum. Fold-down gates and a long compartment in the back of the bed round out the neat features in this truck. Although this truck has a welded to the body rack, I would hope they are now bolted on instead. The stainless steel wheel inserts add a little bling too.

Nice job Carter! Beautiful truck.

One Very Sweet Looking Dually!

Although everyone knows I am into commercial upfitted trucks, and especially colored ones, so when I saw this truck at Future Ford in Roseville, I just had to take a digital look.

This is one sweet looking rig with the body lowered nice and flat and those huge aluminum wheels just glaring at you. There's a black one sitting next to this, but this white one is just so clean looking. It no longer looks like a big old 1-ton dually. This is my kind of commercial truck! Nice job Future Ford!

Very Attractive and Useful 11' Service Body

I received another great body shot from Cascade Truck Body & Welding, in Eugene, Oregon. I wanted to show it off because it is an excellent combination of things. First of all, this is an 11' service body mounted on a Ford 450/550 chassis. What is interesting about this to me is that it has dual raised compartments on both sides.

There are a lot of examples of having the first compartment raised, but it is extremely rare to see the first two compartments raised. Some might put some welding bottles in one compartment, but another great reason for doing this is sheer storage. You can put a whole lot of shelves in there and store a large number of parts or tools. Put drawers in there and you have an awesome mechanics truck.

The next thing I notice is that, at least on the curbside, it has the horizontal series body. With that option (no cost at most places), the horizontal compartment over the wheel is extended all the way to the rear and then instead of a larger vertical compartment at the end, there is a smaller compartment below. Extremely useful depending on what they are carrying and how the truck will be used. I love that feature. They may or may not have the horizontal series on the streetside.

Next, it has a great looking forklift loadable rack and then it has a great Tommy gate with the fold-down gate option.

Very nice looking truck and with this mix of compartments and other features, it will be an awesome work truck as well.

Sweet Short-Box Service Bodies

It is rare to see a service body on a short bed pickup, yet here are a couple of sweet looking ones courtesy of Cascade Truck Body & Welding in Eugene, Oregon. Check out their website. They do a lot of interesting pieces. Sure looks like nice quality work as well with plenty of attention to detail.

Great Color!

Of all the colors I would want out front besides Red, it would be Yellow. There's nothing quite like it to draw attention. That is the point of a display, right? If it doesn't draw attention, what good is it? Might as well park it out back with those other big white things. Not this one! This one goes front and center. Love this truck. Thanks to Kimberly at Harbor Truck Bodies for this shot and thanks to Rugby Manufacturing for the nice looking dump body. I'm drooling. . .

One of the Best Options

This is one of the best options ever invented. I have encouraged many dealers to stock this option on some of their van bodies for three very good reasons. One, it generally sells very quickly. Two, the van body average gross profit is somewhat higher, and three, customers love it because it makes their job easier.

Getting inside a van body is always an issue. The unit shown has a Tommy Aluminum Railgate and is mounted on an aluminum van body from Marathon Industries. With the railgate, you can easily get in without much effort, but a faster, easier way is the side door. Notice the entry height is low and the steps are easy. This makes an outstanding combination for around town deliveries large and small.

My experience in van bodies is that it always seems to be a price driven market. Low grosses is just part of the reality; however, when you add options like this, the value to the customer shoots through the roof and the grosses rise dramatically. Flatbeds are in that same market. A plain flatbed is typically a low gross piece, but turn it into a contractor and it changes dramatically. Accessories and options generally help sell the product more quickly and to increase the gross profit. That's not a bad combination and I have found this to be true on all bodies.

I recommend that you stock this kind of body as 25% of your van body inventory at least. Think of some other great solutions to help customers and build those as well. Call your supplier and say, "hey, what can we do with van bodies to make them more interesting?" I'm sure you will get some good answers.

Interesting Flatbed

Here's an interesting and very nice looking flatbed with unusual gates. I have no idea what the reason for the changes in height, but I'm sure there is one. To me, it just doesn't matter, because it just looks wonderful. . . and interesting. Looks sleek--especially with the tapered headboard.

A Safe Way To Try Color

One of my passions is colored commercial trucks. I built it up to the point that approximately 40% of my entire commercial truck upfitted inventory was color. I stocked every color available, and some more than others. They all sold. Some said it was my insanity, and I say it was my claim to fame. Regardless of the comments of naysayers, it was highly profitable and I had no competition. I like those two in combination with each other.

So, if you want to get your feet wet in the world of commercial truck color, here is a suggestion that may be of help.

The photo above is a really good way to get into color and leave yourself an out. Order up an uplevel cab single rear wheel 3/4 or 1-ton pickup. The photo shown, courtesy of Harbor Truck Bodies is a super cab Ford King Ranch in the Mahogany/Pueblo Gold Metallic combination. With the pickup bed, this is a highly saleable truck. I recommend that you might start with non-metallic colors, but this example is such a sweet looking truck.

If you drop ship it to the service body builder, you will want to work a deal to have them keep the pickup bed stored for you. It may work out better to store it on your lot, then get it to the body company. Regardless, the idea is to order the pickup, remove the pickup bed and add the service body. Down the road, if it doesn't sell in 3-6 months, put the pickup bed back on and get the truck sold and put the service body on a new order. The truck will go down in value, but the body as new will not. There will be a cost to swap bodies, and that will be the cost to play the game, so focus on showing it a lot and not have to do that. Simple, but at least you have a solid plan B here.

In today's world, there are a lot of general contractors and other contractors who don't have a team on the payroll. They bid jobs and sublet parts and keep their costs down. A lot of these people enjoy the superior comfort and convenience of a very nice truck and still have their tools with them. They buy this kind of truck when they find them, or they create them by themselves.

You want to test the market and see what I mean. For the next week, count service bodies you see and record it in two columns. How many are colored and how many are white. I did this recently on a trip of 50 miles early in the morning. I saw 28 service bodies (includes enclosed service bodies like plumber bodies, etc) and 16 of them were colored. Yet, go to the typical commercial truck lot and see if you can even find one colored one. There's opportunity knocking here. . .

Living On The Edge. . .

One day at The Home Depot, I spied a new way to carry concrete to the job: Put it on the lid of the service body! Let's see. . . 7 bags on each side = 14 bags = 700 lbs of concrete mix. I'm not sure I would have thought of carrying them this way. It certainly does spread the load out between the axles. Maybe the treadbrite covering on the lid helps keep them from sliding off. I know they must be planning on smooth turns and no fast stops or starts. . . but what would the fuzz have to say about this?

Another day living on the edge in the contractors life!

A Little Change and It Looks Great

The single rear wheel flatbed has always looked like a fish out of water to me--like it doesn't belong there, yet when I saw this truck, I thought that it looked like a perfect match. It's not the flatbed or the extended cab, but the solid slatted gates that gives it the look along with the underbody box to finish it off. Matter of fact, the underbed box really helps because that empty space there just doesn't look right and the box takes care of it.

So, here you go: A sweet addition to your repertoire. Let the single rear wheel flatbed stocking begin!

Consider Your Suppliers Methods Carefully

After only one year in commercial trucks, I started really looking at my suppliers methods and my own logic. For example, on a flatbed with a rack, the racks were welded to the body and from past experience with a previous employer, I saw that as a problem. That previous employer was always switching out bodies to be able to do a different job and he did a great deal of welding. So, in 1990, I required my suppliers to bolt on their flatbed racks and I began stocking almost exclusively forklift loadable racks and upgrading the size of the posts and number of cross bars.

Notice the contractor body above. In the two shots you can see how the rack is bolted to the floor with a foot and it is also bolted to the top of the headboard. Notice also that it has 4 crossbar supports, the headboard, two over the body and one rear. This is a sweet design by Harbor Truck Bodies where the rear area is devoid of any vertical bars so that area could be used as a work area more efficiently. In addition to that, the design allows a stronger rack because the vertical supports are closer together. In this case, they use 2"x2" tube and that gets the job done for most loads and stays light enough to deal with in removal. In this rack on the 12' contractor, there are 8 bolts to remove and 4 strong friends, gets it off.

Why is removal important? Even on the contractor, all you need do is remove the rack and the top boxes which are also bolted on, and you have an empty flatbed to carry large items. It gives the customer flexibility. They may use that a lot, or very little, but having it is a huge benefit in their mind and actuality when they use it. Of course, all the crossbars are removable as well, so carrying tall things without removing the rack is easy.

Think flexibility for your customer. The thing I like about the contractor is that it is a flatbed underneath all those accessories and it can be back to a flatbed anytime you want it to be.

Another thing was rack design on the service body. Notice the two shots above. The black rack is narrower and mounted on the inside top edge of the service body, the other is mounted on the outside of the body and both are bolted on of course. The stronger rack is the black one and it is because of where it is mounted and the fact that the vertical legs are straight which are far stronger than curved legs. That top edge is a very strong point on the body. The rack is also out of the way of the lids. It was easy to sell this design and I ordered about 80% of my service bodies with this rack. This shot is provided by North Bay Truck Body.

I also liked painting it black rather than body color and that works very well when mounted in that location. Painted the outside edge mounted rack black against the white body would look strange. I liked that for a couple of reasons. One was the black rack picked up on other black aspects of the body such as the tires, door handles, etc. So, aesthetically it was pleasing to the eye in contrast to the body. I tried them in white also, but it wasn't as good. Even on my colored trucks, I painted the rack black. The other reason was utilitarian. Racks get scratched very easily moving product on and off, hanging things off the rack and so on. Those scratches don't show up very well under black paint, but they glare at you through white paint. Unpainted metal, then rusts and the rust is hard to see on black and jumps out at you on white. With the black rack it was easy to just carry a can of black spray paint in one of the compartments and you can touch it up in a couple of seconds. It works very well.

Think in terms of how it benefits or could benefit the customer and it all makes perfect sense.

Tilt Cab Wars: Winners, Losers (Deserters)

I just finished talking about tilt cab advantages #1-6 and the main reason I chose this subject this time is that I have seen a lot of dealers (many Ford LCF dealers) who took on the tilt cab, did little with it and then quit in disgust--hence, the title of this post: Tilt Cab Wars: Winners, Losers (Deserters). I've seen a lot of deserters and they started deserting long before they actually left. It was evident in their displays and their lack of actions in promoting the truck.

To get in and have the franchise, the Ford dealer only needed to commit to 5 units in stock. Such a small number. Many took 5 units and never bought another one. Some took too many 84" CA and this was partly due to bailment pool lack of tilt cab expertise. Many eventually took substantial loses on their remaining 1-2 year old units. Every one of the losses and every one of the deserters were due to ineffective and mismanaged commercial departments. Of course, this mismanagement has a negative effect on all their commercial sales regardless of cab design. I know many from actual experience, and yet, I hate to see Ford lose a potentially good geographic point.

There are a lot of reasons that losers lose, but the main reason winners win is this: The winners don't quit. They stay in the game and keep learning. They are committed.

I don't want this to sound like I'm banging on Ford LCF dealers. The above scenario probably happens at many tilt cab dealers. My purpose in writing about this is to help the dealer who wants to put things into perspective and to make a commitment to making the tilt cab to be a viable and profitable part of their overall commercial operation and I have some points to make to help make it more successful.

First, when I say Tilt Cab Wars, I am speaking about competition. Let's just get it out in the open: Isuzu is the leader in this market by a very sizable margin. Many dealers might even use this as an excuse to bail, but I say don't compete, but instead create. I started two Isuzu tilt cab franchises in two stores, so I am very familiar with Isuzu and the identical Chevy and GMC badged counterparts. I've used that experience to try to help some Ford LCF dealers to get excited about the opportunity they have.

Many would hear that Isuzu was the leader and think that the way to market the product would be to compete with Isuzu (even at Ford meetings they would always compare their features with Isuzu and even suggest that inroads could be made in taking market share away from Isuzu). That is a waste of valuable time and energy. If that approach is taken, I can guarantee failure. Isuzu has been in this game for a very long time and they are very good at it. In many ways it is a superior product. Trying to compete is silly for the LCF because about 50% of the Isuzu sales are gas motors and the LCF has only diesel. That's just one major stumbling block to competition. If you're going to bother competing, you might want a more closely matched competitor. Competition is not the answer. Creative selling is. Find your features, get sold yourself, get excited, and sell the benefits to the customer. Create your own market rather than trying to take a piece of someone else's.

Second, also regarding the phrase Tilt Cab Wars is some dealers might think that taking on a tilt cab franchise will automatically compete with existing conventional cab sales. It is not going to work quite that way. In this case and the case in the previous paragraph, we would be thinking very small. I want to encourage a dealer to think more globally--like this: Adding a tilt cab franchise will allow me to offer more and better solutions for my potential customers problems which will allow me to make additional profits, gain additional customers and thereby gain additional referrals and repeat sales. It's not about war. It's about solutions to your customers problems. The more solutions you can produce, the more trust you will gain with your customers and the more sales and profits will be made.

The best thing is to look at adding the tilt cab as more and different solutions and to become so familiar with the product that you know how to express the customer benefits that you will be opening your customers mind to better ways of doing a thing and how that will help them do what they do better, more efficiently and more profitably.

Commit to keeping the franchise. Learn the Tilt Cab Benefits #1-6--especially #1, #2 and #3.

Offer better solutions by staying away from the 84" CA tilt cab and stocking longer chassis. Seek alternative solutions from various vendors rather than the same bodies over and over again. If you use the same body, you can modify the dimensions and create a different solution as well as an attractive piece. As an example on this, rather than have a standard height service body on the tilt cab, put a taller body like a 56" tall body. It looks like it belongs on the truck with that height, whereas putting a standard height looks like a toy body because the cab is taller. Little things like this will make an amazing difference in turning the tilt cab inventory.

Last, and yet most important is to get people into and driving the truck. It will only be this experience that makes all the other points valid for them. Successful selling of a tilt cab franchise is all in how you choose to think about it. I hope some of these points will convince you of the benefits and to encourage you to be successful and profitable in selling them.

Tilt Cab Advantage #4, 5 & 6

These are more minor advantages, so I will group #4, 5 & 6 in one post.

Advantage #4 is visibility. Because the driver is sitting on top of the wheels instead of behind them, the driver is higher and can see more traffic and some more detail. The other reason visibility is better is that the glass area is larger. Rear visibility is enhanced with standard larger truck style mirrors. In addition, the steering wheel is lower and doesn't affect the visibility at all compared with a conventional cab truck. The dashboard is much lower and it not a visibility issue either. It all translates to better vision of the road, the job site, how close you are to objects and so on.

Advantage #5 is what I call "driveability." This word just means that it drives the way it drives, it feels the way it feels and that is a positive or a negative depending 100% on how the prospect feels when they drive it. Some love it because, as I think myself, it is fun to drive. The way it steers is easier to negotiate obstacles, you have better visibility of the truck and the terrain at the same time. Because of the geometry of the steering wheel, ones arms are in a comfortable position. It seems to take less movement of the wheel to affect movement of the truck. The visibility is great, seating is good and so on. It is totally interpretation by the prospect. One thing is certain and that is that most people are used to the conventional cab design. It's just like your car, or any pickup by any make and so on. So, at first people may feel "out of place" in the tilt cab. This is the critical reason to make sure and demonstrate every time unless they are buying another one. I think the driveability of the tilt cab is an advantage; however, not everyone will agree with this.

Advantage #6 is serviceability, or access to the engine by being able to tilt the cab to expose the full view of the engine. Here again, this is subject to interpretation, mainly by a mechanic. Is it easier to work on? I don't know, but one could very easily have that impression just by being able to show the whole engine and transmission off where on a conventional cab one only sees the front part of the engine and cannot see the transmission at all. Sometimes in classes when we talk about the advantages of the tilt cab, this is expressed as advantage #1, but you see where I put it: way down the list. In reality, the cab will be tilted up only rarely. 99+% of the time, it will be down.

Tilt Cab Advantage #3

To me the #3 advantage of the tilt cab is the turning radius. If I use just one word, it will be maneuverability. The turning radius comes down to two main things. One is the length of the wheelbase, and two is the maximum angle of the wheels on the front axle, which has something to do with the frame width, front axle design and so on.

The main point to keep it simple is the wheelbase. The shorter the wheelbase, the tighter the turning radius. It's logical and you already know that a little economy car will turn a tighter circle than a full size pickup. The big difference is the wheelbase.

So, let's do a few comparisons. Keep in mind, advantages #1 and #2, so we can keep it in perspective with successful sales of this product.

I'll use Ford as our example since I have the statistics at hand. The F250 pickup with standard 8' bed has a wheelbase of 137". Let's compare this to the Ford LCF tilt cab in the shortest wheelbase they make of 113" and this truck would have a 12' bed. That is 24" shorter wheel base (along with a tighter angle on the steering). Previously, I stated that advantage #1 is stocking longer CA units. This model with the 113" wheelbase is an 84" CA and we are not going to stock hardly any in that wheelbase, so the next one up is the 108" CA and the wheelbase on it is 137". Now the tilt cab and the pickup have the same approximate wheelbase, yet the pickup has an 8' bed and the LCF has a 14' bed. Big difference. In this case the LCF will have a slight advantage still due to the ability to turn sharper due to the front axle/frame/suspension design.

There is no doubt that this is a huge advantage.

In the previous example, we were comparing a pickup with the tilt cab. Now let's compare something that is more likely to make sense. Let's take the Ford F450 84" Chassis for example. This unit has a 165" wheelbase and would take a 12' bed. The LCF with the 84" CA has a wheelbase of 113" and would take a 12' bed. The difference in wheelbase is 52"! This is a HUGE difference in maneuverability! Yet, we're not to the really good part yet. Let's compare the same F450 84" CA with the 149" wheelbase LCF which will take a 16' bed. Now there is still a difference of 16" which would be a big deal in its own right, but the interesting thing here is the shorter turning radius AND having a 4' longer bed at the same time. This is such a big deal that I want to jump up and down about it. Just think of the maneuverability improvements as well as productivity improvements. It is just one of the easiest things to get excited about when talking with a prospect.

Now, here's the best way to sell this besides jumping up and down with excitement, which I like to do about this stuff. Get the prospect in the truck and do some tight circle turns and some tight maneuvering around a parking area and then turning around in a city street if you can. Do it in both trucks. If that along with your enthusiasm doesn't sell the prospect, the prospect isn't going to get sold.

Sell the value--what it does and how it performs relative to other vehicles. Understand the features of the truck so that you can understand how that may be important to the prospect. Having at one time driven a dump truck into construction sites, I can tell you that maneuverability is critical. The tilt cab very rarely sells itself. You have to have a good sales pitch that means something to the prospect. That will lead you to be successful at selling more tilt cab trucks. I can tell you this: If I owned a store with commercial trucks, I would absolutely, without a doubt have a tilt cab truck line. It's not even an option.