I've got truck envy

Buddy of mine and I stopped by Adkins Truck Equipment the other day and saw the biggest service truck I've ever seen. Now folks around here tell me my service truck is big (the 'little' one in the pics below....LOL), but the one we saw makes mine look like a baby because it's HUGE.

I didn't get the name of the owner, but we were told that he had nearly $250,000 invested so far. My buddy took the pic and cut off the nose of the truck because he couldn't get any further back to completely frame it, but you can get an idea of the size from the pic. The truck is a Western Star, and as you can see it also has a sleeper. Guy we were talking to at Adkins said all together it's only 3 inches short of being the max legal length for a straight truck in the state it's destined to reside in.

The crane on the corner looks like a baby, but it's actually a 10,000 lb capacity model, and there is also a 30,000 lb winch in the rear bumper. The street side side was too close to the fence to even get a pick, but it's basically a mirror image of the curb side. I know every door I opened was full of either shelves or roll out drawers, and part of the very front box was set up as a cross body box. There are even more compartments at the top front that are accessed by getting up in the bed.

Like I said in the subject line, for the first time in my life I have a slight twinge of service truck envy.....Not that I'd really want anything that big around here, mind you, because it's simply not practical, and the expenses on something that size would be astronomical, but hey, it's just MASSIVELY HUGE so why not ?????....LOL

Business must be good!

To be able to afford something that size the guy must either have ALOT of work, or be charging those $250 an hour rates that they show on 'reality TV' shows like Goldrush.... I know that had mine not been bought and paid for 14 years ago, when times were really good, I'd be screwed nowdays. I mean business is decent, and does seem to be getting a little better again, but I can't ever remember business being THAT GOOD....even if I did nothing but line boring and was able to charge $95 an hour for 10 hours every day.....LOL

Wayne nothing wrong with your rig. I would have sure liked to have had your truck roll up when I was removing the final drive on my JD 5020. Stan

Thanks. I"ve lost count of the number or times I"ll roll up to a new customers place and get told that they never expected someone with a truck "that big" to show up to work on their little machine. Dad and I set it up specifically to work on the older Northwest and Bucyrus Erie cranes we used to do a lot of work on. I do wish I had a bigger crane sometimes but the largest side mount available at the time was the 11,000 lb (at 6 feet) model we went with. Nowdays they make a 14,000 lb model, but from what I"m told it"s not really any stronger than mine because the 14,000 lbs is rated at 3 feet. Thing is it"s almost impossible to find anything that heavy to pick that can be picked at 3 feet. At the time mine was the only one that we could get to pick the main drum shaft out of a 9570 Northwest crane (and that"s with the rear bumper right against the track frame), but it"s something we needed to handle a lot so we went with what worked.

There are times I"d like to have just a little more storage room for common parts, but beyond that I couldn"t be any happier with it now than I was when I first got it....and stepped up from an old C30 Chevrolet. I still don"t know how I got as much stuff on that little truck as I did because I didn"t feel like I added much when I moved stuff from one to another and filled this one up....LOL

I can see that truck having big problems when it has to go off road to make repairs. It's got such a long wheelbase, if there were any ramps to go down or hills, it would high center. Might not be too good if it's muddy either. You'd have to have a lot work for a truck like that unless it's built for a big contractor. There's some big contractors up here that have some huge lube/service trucks. I just saw one that looked new and it was a triple axle!

I would bet that it is heading to oil rig country some where. They usually have those LARGE service trucks. They many times carry large pumps and such in the center of the bed. Those can be quite heavy.

It is nice looking truck.

Your service truck is a good one too. I bet that it has an option that the new one does not have????? IT IS PAID for. LOL

I know exactly what you mean since I go off road a lot. The only place I can see a truck that size really being practical would be in a quarry where there would always be a relatively hard surfaced to drive on, and plenty of room to turn around. I know mine weights in around 32,000 lbs like it sits, and hard surface or not, I can get stuck in an inch of red mud, even if it's laying on top of solid rock. Give me several hundred yards of nothing but freshly rained on (monsooned on to be more exact) red mud, and it takes awhile to get across......something like 2 hours trying to do it all myself (everyone else left at 4) with a D-5 that, thankfully, was on sight that Friday afternoon.

That said, I've been in places over the years where I had to have a D7 pull me both in and out because of the mud. Then there was the time where we used another dozer to drag me around 180 degrees, on a pipeline right of way, and then pulled me back to the closest hard surface which was several hundred yards away. I was really thankful for them taking the time to turn me around as it would have been a really long way back out, in reverse, through an area that was carved straight through the trees, was curvy as heck, and barely as wide as my mirrors in most places.

I'd hate to even begin to try to do any of the stuff I've had to do with a truck that large. Heck the one time I even came close to high centering and clipped the tank mount on the drivers side, this truck wouldn't have even had a chance. With his wheelbase he'd have had a hard time even getting up the speed to get over the hump I had to jump to get back on the road, much less actually get over it.

Now talking about straight lube trucks, I've seen a few pretty good sized ones myself. No tri -axels that I can remember, but by the time they bolt on all the waste and good oil tanks, the can get pretty sizble. Thing is they are rarely expected to actually venture far enough onto the site to have any problems. On the other hand what machine breakd down in the staging area, and doesn't wait until it's on the backs side of nowhere to break down. It's easier to count the machines I've worked on in a good place than to even begin to think about the ones that break down in the worst place they could possibly be...

In the end, it is a really nice truck, and any mechanic would be proud to own it.... but you'd better know exactly what your doing or the size is going to work against you just as much as it works for you.

I hadn't really thought about it, but if I remember right we were told that it's headed up to West Virginia somewhere. Makes me think it's going to be used around the coal mines. Just like the oil fields, that would make sense given the large equipment in those mines too.

Your right about the best option on mine. Dad actually bought it all those years ago, when he and I were working together, but I worked my tail off to make sure it got paid for. It all paid off two years ago when he finally signed the title over to me and it was really "mine" instead of just mine....Had it not been for that I don't know where I'd be right now other than working for someone else, in some underpaid, under appreciated position, and slowly going crazy doing the same thing day in and day out.....

I don't even want to know what the price could be!

It'd cost a lot to keep that tandem on the road and if its going to WVA I've know lots of roads there that truck literally couldn't make the turns on like US 50 or US 250.Probably some big construction company owns it and the owner wants the biggest and baddest truck around.As far as extra storage space for your service truck have you ever thought about a trailer to pull along if you need it?I have a small trailer with tools,air compressor,generator etc I hook to some of my farm equipment when I'm going to be a ways away from home to be able to do small repairs.Just drop the trailer when I pull in the field and then hook up when I leave.

Now, THAT is a service truck. Any idea what the owner plans to do with it?

I like yours very much, as well.

Dean

Oh yea , that is one heck of a service truck. Things have sure changed from way back when i first had a service truck back in 63 . It was a F350 Ford one ton four x four with a 352 four speed no power steering no power brakes and NO a/c but it did have a am radio . And for the body it was built in house and it had one compartment for the toolbox and it was filled with one of everything that was listed in the Mac tool book of the time it also had a compartment for every OTC puller made at that time along with a track pin press and porta powers up to 100 ton . A Hobart PTo driven welder and a gardener denver pto driven air compressor that would run one 100 pound jack hammer if needed two fuel tanks one oil tank one hyd oil tank and a 30 lbs keg of grease with air powered grease gun. Now as for a crane , well if two of us could not hand lift then we would bring in one of the two pieces of equipment that was set a side for heavy service work in the field . One was a I H TD 9 with a center mount crane and the other was a Bucyrus Eire 10B .It was Light years ahead of working out of the back of a car or pick up with a fishing tackle tool box .

I"ve thought about the trailer deal a few times but never really took the time or energy to dive into doing it. In fact I"ve actually got a bed off a one ton truck that I"ve thought seriously about turning into a trailer for just that purpose, or finding a smaller cab and chassis to set it on, and stocking it for use on some of the smaller jobs I get, but the money"s just not right for that at the moment. I"ve actually got the opportunity to buy back my old C30 truck also, but until things get back to normal, and money gets right again, I can"t make that happen either. In the meantime I"ve always just kept a couple of site boxes filled with special tooling, like the spline drive sockets, big torque multiplier, etc for my home made cylinder bench in one, all my A/C stuff in another, and my line boring equipment in another. That way if I know I"m headed out to do a specific type of job I just load the appropriate box in the back and go. Once on site, I can either work out of the box with it in the back, or for the larger one the line boring stuff is in, I"ll often set it on the ground close to where I"m working with the crane. In the end it"s all gotten to be such a routine of doing things like this it would really be hard to make a change to try something else simply because I know what I"m doing works...so why mess with a good thing??? Too after nearly 14 years on this truck I know what I"ve got tool wise, parts wise, etc on it, so I can go right to things when I need them instead of trying to remember where I put something on the trailer that I only use a few times a year.

On that note, I have given really serious thought to setting the trailer up just to do service type work like changing filers, etc. I do mainly repairs, and do very little service work, but I do have a couple of customers that ask me to do it, and as long as they are willing to pay the bill, I"m more than happy to oblige them. In that scenario having the trailer set up with a couple of oil tanks, a grease drum, and the minor tools needed would be great. Too it would alow me to just tow it with my pickup instead of driving my service truck 40 miles to spend an hour changing filters on a little farm/garden tractor. Ultimately it would save the customer a lot of money, but as long as they don"t mind paying, I don"t mind doing it just like I have been.

I remember Dad's trucks when he was at the dealerships back in the 60's and 70's. The first one I actually remember was a small, black Chevrolet with a 6000 lb electric cable crane on the side. From what I remember him saying that was actually his second truck. The first one had nothing but mechanical 'boom' that hinged over the cab when not in use, and then hinged out the back of the bed, and had two legs to support it, for use. The winch was a come-along, block and tackle, or whatever you needed to pick up the part.

For the heavier items, I've also seen the portable gantry's that CAT offered in some of their old tool manuals. I love those old manuals as many of the home made tools they show how to make still have a viable place even with the new equipment. I've actually got several of them marked in one of the books and have plans to build them when time permits. One in particular is a set of ramps that set on the track, after you break it. For the low track machines it allows you to climb the machine up on it, and then block it up, to allow removal or the track frame, final drives, etc. I've seen many times this would save a lot of time -vs- trying to jack one up on soft ground.

It's also funny to look at the 'mechanic's tool list' they give. It usually consists of a socket set, a handful of wrenches, and other assorted items like screw drivers, pliers, and a hammer. Even funnier is to look at several years worth of them and see where they have changed say the 16 oz hammer to a 20 oz hammer, (if all else fails....LOL), or something like that. Usually the tool they removed seems just as important as the new tool they decided to include. Thinking about it now, even with all the tools I carry there are really only a handful of them that get used on a routine basis. The rest are simply along for the ride, until that one time every few years that they prove themselves invaluable.

In the end, your right about one thing. In the mechanic world, things have come a really long way in the last 40 years or so.....but then so have the machines.

Thanks. Other than being told that it was headed to West VA, I don't have any idea what the intended purpose is.

Wayne
I still have your old C-30 sitting here in the building.
I think you need to buy it back and give it a good home.
I do have a newer truck now but ,since I have retired somewhat ! I don't use the little chevy very much no more, it is just sitting in the shed.

Yeah, I know it"s still got a good home with you for the time being. Heck if I could afford to buy it back today, I"d probably wake up in the morning and find that it had run away back to VA. I mean you"ve kept the "ole girl with a roof over her head so long I know she"s gotten spoiled....LOL

Thankfully with things finally starting to pick up a little lately work wise, and hopefully with things finally getting worked out in other areas that have been siphoning off money as fast as it came in for the past 6 years, finally having permission to get the rest of mine and Dad"s stuff out of his shop, etc, etc, etc, I"ll be able to bring the "old girl back home eventually. Until then, I know that money talks and BS walks, so if you are presented with the opportunity to give her another home and make some cash to boot, I"ll not hold it against you....I"d do the same thing...

I was going to joke and say, "I wonder if its available in a hybrid", but I don't really wonder. That does remind me though that a while back I was on a busy four lane expressway and passed an all electric Navistar semi tractor with trailer on my passenger side. There was so much road noise from everyone including me though that I couldn't hear if it made any noise other than tire noise or wind wooshing. Our AT&T fleet has some hybrid pickups and I almost got run over one day by one that was backing up. If I hadn't looked to see what sounded like tire noise on the pavement, I would have took a few more steps and been directly in its path. Maybe they should put beepers on them.

By the way, yours and it are good looking rigs. Although its pretty big. Almost way too big. Maybe show rig big. Oh well, the guy can afford it, what the heck. Hope he enjoys it and makes enough money to buy a fleet of them, even if only to park on his lawn and look at them...because he can.

Mark