Utility Trucks
Once you define 'utility truck,' it starts being a fun business.
ED THOMAS
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
If you want it, a truck keeps it coming. And by "it," we mean electricity, telecommunications, working street lights and traffic signals — those technical things that are so much a part of our industrialized society. Such sundries require overhead lines and other equipment that must be installed, maintained and repaired. The technicians who accomplish all this do it with the assistance of utility trucks.
What exactly is a utility truck? Those in the business acknowledge it can be a number of things. They define it as a chassis with a body having outside-accessible compartments and a hydraulic boom with a bucket for lifting workers and tools. The boom might carry an auger-type digger to punch holes in the dirt, or claws to grab and set new poles. The boom separates utility from "service" — another type of truck with a similar-looking body but whose duties aren't quite so rigorous.
Utility trucks might get their name from public utility companies, which supply electric power and phone service. These outfits tend to have heavy duty vehicles with a lot of carrying and lifting capacity. "Linemen" tend to make good money and enjoy long careers, unless their old Ma Bell- and Edison-type outfits have laid them off, sold their trucks and outsourced the line-maintenance work to contractors. In that case, those guys probably went to work for the contractors, and now make less dough and worry more about job security. And they probably use trucks with fewer bells and whistles.
Public utilities and utility contractors need heavy chassis to support the long and heavy booms that might have to reach wires 75 feet or more off the ground. Booms are described by the length of their folding arms when fully extended, which range from about 30 feet to 150 feet or more, explains Steve Lewis, who runs Ufleet, a San Diego-based remarketer of such equipment. Before that, he sold for Global Rental Co., a division of Altec in St. Joe, Mo., which makes utility bodies.
If electrical wires are involved, the booms are insulated with fiberglass sections so they don't transmit charges down to the ground, possibly electrocuting people near the truck, explains Hal Acree, general manager of Fontaine Truck Equipment Co.'s branch in Louisville, Ky. Non-conductive hydraulic fluid runs in the hoses and hardware is made of nylon or plastic. Tree trimmers using bucket trucks might have insulated booms if they trim branches around electric wires.
Utility bodies go on trucks as small as 3Ú4-ton pickups (and occasionally even lighter), but more often on 1-ton-plus chassis. A utility truck with a 30-foot boom on a light chassis might cost $30,000. A more "normal" truck with a 55- to 60-foot boom on a midrange chassis would cost around $110,000 (plus another $10,000 to $20,000 for safety-related equipment spec'd by public utility companies). And a heavy on/off-road truck with a huge 155-foot boom can go as high as $900,000, Lewis says.
Trucks that stay on the street can use a normal chassis. For work off-road, trucks need heavy frames to resist twisting, and some get front-driving axles. Power take-off equipment supplies energy to hydraulic pumps to run the booms and other gear (although light trucks with small booms might use electric pumps for the boom hydraulics).
The chassis is selected after the customer determines what he needs the boom — and therefore the body — to do. The boom and body weigh X-number of pounds, and will carry tools, parts and supplies that weigh X-pounds more. All will fit in or on a body of a certain size. From these factors and more come the chassis with appropriate capacity and dimensions.
Large utilities often solicit bids from local dealers with whom they establish a relationship. Most contractors work more directly. Chassis are set up with frame and axle capacities, cab-to-rear axle dimensions and other specifications to handle the various bodies. Chassis are drop-shipped to where the bodies will be mounted.
Body and chassis come together at body makers' facilities or at specialty distributors, explains Steve Spata, technical services manager at the National Truck Equipment Association in Farmington Hills, Mich. One problem in the business is that users don't always consult with distributors, and sometimes expect them to install a body on an inadequate chassis. This is a serious matter because the distributor must certify the vehicle as meeting minimum performance and safety requirements.
"The body length determines the cab-to-axle dimension," says Acree of Fontaine Truck Equipment, one of the larger distributors. "Then you have gross vehicle weight. So someone might choose a heavy pickup chassis with a 56-inch cab-to-axle number, and that's correct. But you know the chassis is limited in its GVW, and the body the customer wants to put on will carry tools that will raise its weight beyond the GVW rating. Now you know that he can't have some of that stuff on the body because it creates a certification issue."
To put an official certification label on the door jamb, manufacturers and distributors must be sure the chassis can carry the intended weight on or off road, and as the weight shifts to either end or side to side while the boom is working. Boom trucks get suspension stabilizers and/or outriggers to support off-center loads. Government and industry procedures prescribe tests where a boom carrying its maximum weight extends to its full length in certain directions and angles. Acree says Fontaine and other distributors physically do the tests on all vehicles before they're shipped.
"This is the place to find out if it's going to tip over," he says of Fontaine's yard. "Of course, there is also operator responsibility" after the vehicle is in the customer's hands, he adds. Crewmen must know the equipment and how to use it, and respect its limits. Most do, he says.
However, owners and operators commonly overload the chassis with tools and supplies. This sometimes happens because the customer wanted to save money by buying the minimum chassis size possible. Or he wants to make one truck do the job that two trucks once did, and that second job requires extra tools be carried everywhere. Sometimes the operator just loads it with extra supplies, like nuts and bolts, so he doesn't have to go back to the home yard during the week.
Who specs new trucks? Big utilities have staff engineers who determine exactly what they need. Smaller utilities and contractors may follow the lead of their larger brethren, or learn from experience what works best for them. Many have preferences for both chassis and bodies and their associated equipment. Acree says he tries to remain "brand neutral" while steering customers toward chassis that he knows will work for a given application and away from what may not.
Small contractors often buy used trucks at auctions or through dealers like Ufleet. Lewis and his associates arrange deals and list many trucks on a web site. Last year the company sold about 75 trucks, and he and his partner hope to build the business to 300 or 400 annually in a few years. He estimates that about 20,000 new utility trucks are sold in a typical year.
Like all businesses, dealing with utility trucks has its hassles, but it's also fun, partly because of the interesting equipment, but mostly due to "great people," Lewis says. "There's something about the quality of the people, both at the utilities and the contractors. They're just good to work with."
