Truck construction.

Claudia and I worked long and hard for about two years trying to decide just what we wanted in a truck. We looked at every truck we could find along the way, and talked with the owners when we could. We got lots of suggestions from the many owners we talked with. Taking this information and adding the things that we felt were a must for us, we ended up with the truck we have now. 

I was lucky enough to be able to do the work myself for the most part. I did all the welding and design for the truck. Taylor wings did the five aluminum boxes, but I did the rest of the bed.

In the following pictures you will be able to get some idea how it all went together.

We started out this project while I was finishing up a project in Iowa. We bought the truck and trailer while I was on a job in Minnesota. We took delivery of the trailer while we were still in Minnesota, but the truck had to catch up to us while I finished this hotel  in Iowa. Since the truck did not come with anything but the frame rails in back I had to get some kind of temporary bed and hitch installed to get the package back to Bend.

I made a bed out of plywood and two by fours to keep the road debris off the trailer. I found a full size semi hitch for $100.00 and installed it on the truck for the ride home. We were a sight to see on the way home. People looked at us like we were crazy. By the time I got the hotel finished and the truck all packed up, I had also installed a 150 gallon fuel tank off a long haul truck just behind the cab. We had all kinds of wire and hoses tied down on the plywood bed. As things turned out, we had some major problems with the truck on the way home and ended up stranded in Sparks,  NV for five days. While we waited for the truck to be repaired, we found two Honda scooters that we just had to have. The only place we had to cart them home was on the bed, so I tied them them on as best as I could and off we went for Bend. It was a sight to see. We looked tike the Beverly hillbillies on the way home.

Here is the start of the truck bed. I was able to get a good book from Freightliner on bed installations. It explained in great detail methods to attach the bed to the truck. I chose to use the method that employs  wood between the frame rails and the bed rails. I started out with 4x4x 3/8 angle iron over the frame rails attached with clamps that go around the frame rails and the angle iron. I liked this method the best because it did not require me to drill holes in the truck frame. 

I used a piece of 3/8 plate steel for the hitch area of the bed. I started out with a sliding hitch. I made most of the hitch myself out of a Reese 20k hitch that I found cheap. As it turned out when I was all done, if I wanted to carry the scooter, I would not be able to move the hitch forward from where it ended up. I had used this hitch on my Dodge for about two years and really liked it. I found that the hitch needed to be 48" behind the center line of the rear axle. This sounds like it is too far back, but I found after a trip to the scales that it really did not matter where I placed the hitch on the truck. The MDT is heavy enough to take the load of the trailer that far back and not take a significant amount of weight off the front axle. Having the hitch behind the rear axle has two major advantages for me. First it gave me tons of room to use for storage on the bed of the truck that the trailer could not hit. Second, it cut down on the off tracking of the trailer. It enables me to get into some very tight camp sites, and it makes those small country roads a lot easier to maneuver.

Here I have the basic bed constructed. I have all four of the outside boxes completed. The hitch is installed. and I am ready to start closing the system in. I ended up with the Onan quiet diesel installed between the two front boxes. I wanted to put the 125 gallon fuel tank in this spot for safety reasons, but it was just too much trouble to cut up the left side box to accommodate the generator. Since I had the left side box vented for the generator, I ended up trading places with the two items. 

Just under the hitch, I placed a 55 gallon fuel tank to run the generator. It fits in between the frame rails and is protected from impact in case of an accident. That was the main reason for the location of the 125 gallon tank, but it just didn't work out that way.

This is the left side of the truck with the boxes removed. I used 1/8 material for the sides and the back of the bed. 

The picture is not too good, but this is how the back of the truck started out. I wanted lots of lights on the truck. I ended up with three tail / stop lights. One separate turn signal and four back up lights. When I ordered the truck, I had it set up to pull a semi trailer. I not only got air brake setup for the trailer, it gave me two different lighting setups to use. The trailer is not wired up for separate turn signals, but the truck is. In the dark when the truck is bobtail, you really see the back of the truck.

These two pictures are out of order some what, but they give good views of the fuel tank construction and the generator installation.

The fuel tank has baffles in it, and I ended up with a hand pump to transfer fuel to whatever tank needs it. Building the tank and getting it installed in the side box was more work than I had planned, but it was worth the effort in the end. 

I ended up with a truck capacity of about 195 gallons, which gives me a range of approximately 1600 miles. This way I can buy fuel when it cheap, not when I need it. Hopefully this will save up money in the long run, verses the cost of hauling the extra weight. The generator tank allows me between 75-100 hours of operation.

So far as I can tell the extra weight makes very little difference in the fuel economy.