Van or box truck?

[Warren Wallace]

What would be you choice and why, i'm looking into a tnt from les and thinking about a 14 ft. box truck....

 

[Bob Foster]

If you are going to carry your own water and you are high flow you will want to carry at least 125 gallons so get a box van for the room and the GVW. You could go a short as 12 feet if the truck is well organized. Having built two separate box vans with Judson units in them I can give you some real good specs to follow for van configuration and weight distribution.

If you get a regular van get and extended 1 ton van.

 

[Walt]

You might want to take a look at a sprinter. Over 6 feet high inside and much easier to get in and out of.

I carry 160 gallons of water and 125 gallon waste tank- tons of gear.

Box van makes a really nice billboard.

 

[Bob Foster]

Walt how many miles do you have on that Sprinter now?

Any problems or high costs in the maintenance?

The new generation of Sprinter is a lot better than the old one. I wonder what is going to happen to Sprinter in North America with the auto shakedown happening. Is Freightliner still going to sell it?

 

[Desk Jockey]

I prefer a box truck unless you have a lot of tree branches or steep hills. The marketing value of having a rolling billboard out weighs a van any day.

Being able to stand up and walk around makes it so much easier to work out of. The ability to have your cleaning plant on wheels, is peace of mind.

Having all your tools and chems with you, knowing if you need something you didn't plan on it's out there in the truck makes cleaning life easier.

Heating in winter is a concern unless you have a garage big enough, and fuel consumption will be more for hauling it all around is the other big draw back.

 

[GeneMiller]

Box truck definitely. You just can't beat the billboard rolling down the street. I carry 200 gals plus everything that I need for those just in case of jobs. I get far more walk ups then before and size is the only difference. I get an average of 12 mpg carry all the weight which isn't bad. I only drive around 8000 miles per year so fuel isn't that big of a consideration for me. If you factor in the truck as part of your advertising budget it even looks better.

Gene

 

[SMRBAP]

As big as our sprinters (we have the long tall boys) are they have about the same real estate for stickers as the last box we had. And we get about 22-24 MPG hauling everests and 100 gallon f.w. tanks and that 5 cyl has more getup than our 1 ton vans (2 e350's).

I don't know about the folks who have had issues with the older sprinters, we have an 02,03,04, mileage between 110k-146k and have had no big issues to date. Had all three since 07 - and so far 2 sets of pads, 1 set of rotors, 4 fuel filters, one turbo intercooler tube, and one water pump.

I could go out and get a new one, but I can't see paying 45k for a new one when 17-20k gets me a used one with 70-90 k (keeping in mind the engine is not fully broken in until 65k).

For giggles we went to test drive one at a local dealer who had one with 510k (original motor and tranny) on it (no typo, over a half million) - and unbelievably - it ran really really well. I was going to snag it just to haul equipment for flood jobs, but the body was beat to death, but the dude ran like a champ, and shifted fine.

Its different looking yes - but that alone gets attention, we get a ton of compliments on them from custy's.

 

[Walt]

Walt how many miles do you have on that Sprinter now?

Any problems or high costs in the maintenance?

The new generation of Sprinter is a lot better than the old one. I wonder what is going to happen to Sprinter in North America with the auto shakedown happening. Is Freightliner still going to sell it?

I have a whopping 11k miles on my sprinter. It did have a small problem when I got it - but was fixed under warranty. Took about an hour. There is a Freightliner dealer locally and that is where I get it serviced - The Dodge dealership is lame. Freightliner is still selling them here, I don't know what there plans are. They are very popular in the Northwest so it's hard to see them going away.


A full service maintenance on the sprinter was 300 bucks. They used full synthetic oil. I swear every time I took the Vortex in it was 600 or more.

 

[clean one]

I'm in the process of redoing my 15 footer just put some new carpet tiles in and some new white tile board on the walls today. next i will taking a TNT out of a trailer and putting it in here. Or i'm going to trade it for a new TNT high flow with a 4ht

 

[Bob Foster]

How many hours have you got on your TNT?

 

[ACE]

Nice set up Bob! I don’t know if I have ever seen a slide-in that sets on top of the recovery tank like that. I am defiantly going for a box truck next time. Another advantage to box vans is that rust is less of an issue. I bet I spend 2-3 hours per week just loading and unloading equipment from my van to my garage.

 

[Bob Foster]

Thanks. I did a little more fiddling around and found homes for some of the other tools. The Little Giant is being vented outside the truck next week.
The truck has power ventilation and is designed to run doors shut for security and noise considerations.

 

[Curtis Pennington]

Love our set up Bob...very nice.

 

[Ron Werner]

have to take some more shots from inside

 

[Walt]

http://s715.photobucket.com/albums/ww15 ... mview=grid

 

[daniel@procarpet]

Thats an awesome setup, but I would hate to see the cost to get those reels and have the van set up like that.

 

[GeneMiller]

I looked at the sprinter because it was so unique. Like you say people notice it. The problem that I found was that if you tie into the fuel system you void the warranty. They do get great gas mileage which was very appealing but between the fuel problem and the narrow inside it didn't allow me to mount my machine the way I would want to.

Gene

 

[Johnny]

The Sprinter is narrower than American vans so an oxcart can pass it in its country of origen.

________________________________

STOP GLOBAL COOLING!

 

[Bob Foster]

The new generation sprinter is wider.

 

[Walt]

The new Sprinter van is actually a little wider than a chevy van.

But still not as wide as a box truck. The box on a vortex is 8 feet wide.