Thoughts on flat beds & tool bodies

2hip

New member
When I bought my 07 Duramax Silverado 3500 dually it had a steel contractors body on it with upper and lower boxes and overhead racks...made out of steel. Was getting anywhere from 11-13mpg. Sold all of that for 3K...drove to Florida and had an aluminum bed installed with lower boxes, headache partition, and now get 18-20mpg. I have never had a CHP in california flag me for my flatbed. I will never own another truck in my life with a box...You can load bikes, building supplies, anything u can think of in a hearbeat and strap it down..in minutes...try loading a bunch of 4x8 panels, masonary, assorted lumber, texas fencing, in the confines of a regular box. I use the lower boxes to store stuff and lock it up...
U will never go back to a box after a flatbed...and when u dump the truck u can just order a stripped truck or just fleabay the old box and transfer your flatbed over to the new truck."have bed will travel"
 

Rovertrader

Supporting Sponsor
Also a flatbed convert, and certainly attest to their flexibility. My Power Wagon with Ute bed went from a usable 4'x6.5' flat area with high sides to get over/around to 7'x7' flat area, all three sides fold down for easy access, yielding almost 100% increase in area, and only weighs 300# so adds about 300# to work load...
 

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haven

Expedition Leader
Rovertrader and 2hip, you both make great points in favor of the flatbed/tray approach!

Here are two of my favorite flatbed designs

The Highrise camper from Australia http://www.highrise.com.au/ute.html
highrise-2.png


The XPCamper from USA http://www.xpcamper.com/
xpcamper-dunes.jpg
 

Scott Brady

Founder
I think the flat/ute bed has a lot of merit.

I have heard some horror stories about the tool bodies though, as they can be so heavy and so stiff that frame damage occurs. Some stories from Bill Swails' first camper (non-EarthRoamer) come to mind. Not sure the hit to GWVR would be worth the tool body, though I can see the appeal.
 

Blair W

New member
I have an 1988 F350 4x4 regular cab pickup with a Stahl utility body on it. 1972 10' NCO Alaskan on utility body. My thoughts re utility bodies:

I bought the truck (used) with the utility body already on it. Came that way, I was not looking for a utility body. Since then, I've learned I'm not sure how I would carry all my stuff with a regular truck bed. Tools, firewood, Oasis compressor w/air tank, LP cylinder, chairs/table, extra water, tankless water heater, three house batteries...it all lives in utility bed cabinets. I actually have many unused storage areas in the camper--dont' have anything else to put in them.

I have taken the truck over Steel Pass, south in Baja to BofLA (via the Gulf road from Puertocitos through Gonzaga and past Cocos), up Coyote Ridge near Bishop, etc. Not rockcrawling, but I think I can reasonably say this truck gets used "offroad". It does just fine, albeit at slower speeds than my trail-prepped XJ.

The downsides to the utility bed: (1) camper choices: 4x8 inside dimension means camper choice is limited. The Alaskan fits like a glove, but a 4WP won't fit without significant modification. And the utility bed sides are higher than a normal truck bed...again, this limits camper choices (in particular, a cabover would look funny as the cabover section would be very high above the cab roof). I believe lower-sided utility bodies are available...just that most of the used utility bodies I've seen have had the higher sides. (2) the utility body is steel and therefore heavy...I figure somewhere around 3000lb Alaskan combined with utility bed. Right at GVW. Modification to uprate the rear suspension was necessary to carry load. Baja trip cracked both frame rails behind the cab. Since that was repaired, no issue, so I am hopeful the frame weakness has been solved. Beyond that, the utility body has proven to be plenty strong.

Sometimes a regular truck bed with a 4WP seems appealing because its so much lighter. I may even someday do that. But...dunno, the utility body carries a ton of stuff!

Blair
 

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Penguinman

New member
I have a flatbed on my 93 Dodge CTD....I love it. You can haul so muchI have plans for a removable rack system I hope to weld up soon, get a popup tent, have a Warn winch for my bullbar, lift, lockers, etc.....lots to do but not lots of money....keep ya posted
 

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lowenbrau

Explorer
Our 2002 F-350 has a tool bed. It's very useful for stowing all kinds of stuff. We mostly carry recovery equipment in it, but we do have an air compressor in one, some tools, etc. Very handy.

P6230685.jpg


- Andy


I love this style of tool bed. Unfortunately they aren't easy to find. Ford shut the manufacturer down for copyright infringement because the box looked too stock.

I don't understand why North Americans demand the largest, most powerful, highest capacity pickup trucks and then accept a box with nary a tie down in it. It's just so impractical and in many cases unsafe. I love the Aussie way of thinking where they won't trust a manufacturer to build a decent tray and order everything cab and chassis. The aftermarket aluminum tray business there does a great job.
 

digitalferg

Adventurer
Also a flatbed convert, and certainly attest to their flexibility. My Power Wagon with Ute bed went from a usable 4'x6.5' flat area with high sides to get over/around to 7'x7' flat area, all three sides fold down for easy access, yielding almost 100% increase in area, and only weighs 300# so adds about 300# to work load...

Where is this flat-bed tray from? I am hoping to find something very similar for a Tacoma.

Edit: Well i looked closer at the pics and the mud flaps say utebed.com. So I'll check there. :D
 

Capt Eddie

Adventurer
I am right now putting a flatbed and aluminum boxes on my new Dodge 4500. After years of using a Stahl tool bed. My wife will not let me buy a truck with a factory bed on it. But All the boxes were $4000.00 $400 for the tread plate. $400 for the structural steel. But it will fit my Lance camper perfectly.
 

Maverick1701

Adventurer
Also a flatbed convert, and certainly attest to their flexibility. My Power Wagon with Ute bed went from a usable 4'x6.5' flat area with high sides to get over/around to 7'x7' flat area, all three sides fold down for easy access, yielding almost 100% increase in area, and only weighs 300# so adds about 300# to work load...

I love this truck....every time I see it pop up on here it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I wish the UTE beds were more popular here in the US. they are really functional and look really cool (which is obviously most important).
 

CBE

New member
I love this style of tool bed. Unfortunately they aren't easy to find. Ford shut the manufacturer down for copyright infringement because the box looked too stock.

^^^Interesting, I didn't know that.


Andy, you didn't know that because it isn't true. Ford did no such thing. In fact, Thomas Cavenaugh, a Ford mid level executive who was the Super Duty program manager in the late nineties when the Super Duty was developed, gave an advance drawing to Dudley DeZonia, the owner of Royal Truck Body who manufactured the sculpted utility body, long before the Super Duty was introduced. The drawing was only the side profile, in cross section, not the entire design rendering. Sort of like a clandestine scribble on a napkin... in order to give DeZonia's designers (from Mexico) an idea about how to create the external skin door stampings and fiberglass corner trims. Even then, a design intern at Royal truck ended up softening the lower body crease because it seemed too harsh, as there was no actual Super Duty truck in existence at that time upon which to "copy" the body.


Ford's incentive for giving up the body line profile? So that aftermarket accessories could be available for the truck immediately after launch. Ford not only provided the cut line to Royal Truck... Ford also featured a photo of Royal Sport Dually body in Ford's 1999 RV & Towing Guide, and the same photo was used in other official Ford marketing materials related to towing.


The only "copyright infringement" that Royal Truck body faced with respect to this sculpted body was a legal dispute relating to the body's original name: "Lock 'N Load". That name was already in use by another company (by a lot of folks, actually, because it is a popular idiom of the English language and American western gun culture), and that company took action, so Royal Truck Body had to come up with a new name and destroy all the original brochures (wish I had kept one) with the Lock 'N Load name.


The reasons for discontinuing the manufacture of this sculpted utility body are many, but they have nothing whatsoever with Ford "shutting the manufacture down." The manufacture is still in business, still manufacturing utility bodies. It was the manufacturer's decision to stop production of the sculpted bodies (they produced one for the GM truck as well, called the "Summit"). The bottom line reason was simple. The beds weren't making a profit. Few recreational/personal use buyers were willing to pay $8,000 to $10,000 for the body, which 15 years ago, was a lot more money in a truck than it is today. Commercial buyers couldn't care less about the body lines matching the cab, and for work purposes preferred to have larger enclosed compartments that were taller and wider than the sculpted body could manage and still fit within the cab width and window sill height of a regular pickup bed.


The sculpted body was also doomed by the way it was distributed. A separate company, called ABC Body, was used to distribute the bodies throughout the United States. Since the body wasn't commercial, it didn't make sense to paint the bodies all white, because the color choice of the private customer might be Woodland Green, or Prairie Tan, or Denim Blue, or Ebony (mine). So the bodies were shipped UNPAINTED by rail car from California (where they were made) to a holding yard in Kentucky (where the Super Duty was made), and the North East (forgot what state). ABC contracted with other body companies in these locations to paint and mount the bodies as orders (which were few and far between) came in for them. Well, while the bodies sat unpainted, waiting for customer orders, they began to corrode. But, they got painted anyway. Then, the customer would find rust perforation in short order, and then Royal Truck Body would get stuck with the warranty cost to replace or repair the body.


When I last visited the manufacturing plant in California back in 2002, there was a grave yard of rusted sculpted bodies stacked two and three high on top of each other. Royal was cannibalizing those corroded bodies for parts, to repair or build new sculpted bodies. Business wasn't getting any better for this line in the following year, as the US entered into the first of two wars waged in this century, and fuel prices were beginning to climb. The final chapter in the life of this sculpted body came in the form of a plant fire that burned the tooling that was dedicated to making it. What is interesting about this fire is that just a year or two prior, Dudley DeZonia had invested a huge amount of money in plant upgrades to make these bodies. There was some reported speculation that the plant fire was allegedly set on purpose, for the insurance proceeds to recover from this bad business investment. There is no way to really know what happened, other than these bodies are not made anymore, and that Royal Truck, who was granted a patent on various aspects of the design, allowed the patent to expire.
 

Warn Industries

Supporting Vendor
Huh; who knew?

So just an update: Our '02 Super Duty is no long officially in the WARN fleet. It was, however, sold to a WARN employee!

Andy
 

RPhil

Adventurer
Very interesting read (coming from someone who works in the Automotive Industry as a major OEM supplier). Thanks for the story.
 

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