Ultimate Work Truck: The Tool Tank

so I put this bed on a different truck another Ford one-ton 13 years ago a friend of mine George Smith and I built it George probably did 70% he had a lot of the great design ideas and he was almost single-handedly responsible for the crane but I knew pretty much what I wanted as a contractor on a flatbed we've modified the existing sort of husk of a bed into something that was exactly what I wanted let me show you how this thing works for me this is a 12-foot bed six foot eight wide that leaves about three inches of the duals projecting outside of the footprint of the trailer but it kind of holds things in kind of tidy so I don't feel like I'm hanging out over with just with the truck and it gives me a clear field of view down the side of the truck to the front of the trailers that I'm so often pulling so these boxes were designed primarily to be strong and secure I didn't worry about what they weighed the metal pieces were cut out and then formed the edges were rolled and on a big press break these ridges were broken into the door from corner to corner that provides some rigidity and that diaphragm as if 3/16 needed it but it just makes a nice-looking and nice strong coil this is a giant piano hinge they can be bought that way in 6-foot segments cut to length weld it on let me point out this little eyebrow we extended the roof turn the edge down that keeps rainwater from working back inside the door and running down on the inside it's just a real tough door I like it I get a lot of stuff in here it concerns me that this compressor fits so well because when it dies I'm gonna have a hard time duplicating that fit that room for a couple of pin guns staplers got the laser cut the gate mouth bag with all the little hand tools miscellaneous stuff drill bits four foot level fits in there pretty nice perfect for what I do so this lower box you can see that's 34 inches long this is where I carry my fasteners miscellaneous fasteners and hardware nail-gun nails screws all kinds of screws and bolts and staples I've got one of almost anything that I need in there it's easy for it to get out of control but you know it works pretty good these things are put on there so if they jar open they can't come all the way open and I'm not going to leave a trail of stuff down the road if I have a little bad luck so I've got two of these boxes I've had them for probably thirty years I bought them in Las Vegas their neck you've seen neck boxes or the characteristic tacky brown color they're very secure very weatherproof great boxes on this side I carry my go-to tools the stuff that I'm going to roll out on 90% of the jobs that I show up at skill saw bags couple nail guns the things that come out more often than not there are items down in the bottom that are more occasional but just this box is opened every time I stop the truck so the first truck that I had this bed on was a two-wheel drive it was about four inches lower and I didn't need any help getting up into the box when I put it on the four-wheel drive which by the way you've got to have all right you just got to have it when I put that on I realize I'm too short so I put these steps on they work great I put this on when I built the truck because I load cords up here in this basket on the top it occurred to me that there's quite a bit of space wasted up there in the rack but then I could put a basket up here they would hang down below the level of the bearing surface on the rack nice pop four cords but don't put air hoses up here and air hose will blow out so these lower boxes they're not as secure as top boxes and so I don't really keep the real value in them this box I use for miscellaneous I keep my wire reels in here keep masking tape and construction tape I keep it wire tying equipment pliers have an assortment of hole saws masking supplies keep a couple bundles of shims always carry a bottle Jack you never know when you might have to lift a garage header welding rods this is just kind of a rough work rough work thing this is a control to my crane we'll set that up in a minute these are the tools that I may need or I may not need I got drill bits and miscellaneous power tools primarily in here nice and dry nice and secure nobody's going to bother them with us things locked up I keep wrenches in here keep a little snatch block for getting the double purchase on my crane you're you're aware of mechanical advantage but sometimes it's really nice to be able to get a reduction in the lift on that crane as much to slow the lift as to increase the lift pretty handy by the way that's the same reason I like four-wheel drive I don't usually go mud running but when you're backing a trailer up a long driveway put it in four-wheel low you can creep it just really makes maneuvering a trailer a lot easier yep so this is a couple of things this is where I carry my stakes concrete Stage three focus 30 inches and this is where the crane mechanism is located there's a battery in here there's the pump there's the hookup for the crane control I'm going to demonstrate that just a second let me just say this about the crane before I got the first crane put on this truck which was smaller and lighter my back trouble made it such that probably six times a year my wife would have to help me put my socks on and help me lace my boots since I put a crane on my work truck she hasn't had to pull those socks on even once a crane on your work truck is the best chiropractor on the planet so this is one of George Smith's really wonderful inventions George another wizard let me say that again George is another wizard he's a heavy diesel mechanic he's just if he would have had the advantage of a college education he would have spent his career working for NASA okay he can figure anything out if you've got something that's broken and you needed to be running give it to George Smith and in 20 minutes it's going to be running out of here what it is but didn't we look at this a lot of adjustable hitches are vertical which means that they're always wiggling back and forth by putting this angle in here the weight of the tongue puts it in a bind that takes all the wiggle right out of it okay it's just it's just pretty brilliant I had to reinforce it a little bit here I kind of tweaked it a couple of times i welded on this step so I can use it to get in and out but that that hitch is just just a home run so these these racks are a little unhandy to take in and out but that kind of works for me too I mean people don't mess with it I just take a stake and I put it in there and all four sides will come off like that it gives me six feet of flat bed in the back let me show you this d-ring I knew I'd be tying down the location welded in those hold downs so I can tie something down inside the footprint of the bed [Music] no rattle no shake so here's how this crane works that's the control that's just an lb a three-quarter inch electrical aluminum lb with the controls in it drilled the cover forged the hook you'll see how that works in a minute this is just a trailer light hookup got a little maintenance issue right there but I just reach inside here I've got the matching female side trailer hookup wrangled up [Music] the boom was electric over hydraulic got a pump and hydraulic pump the crane the the winch is an atv winch 4,500 pound capacity I never use anywhere near that but you can see the timing is good I can line down and boom up and hold the load and I can boom down and line up that's pretty good in fact it looks very good the swing is mechanical I have to I mean manual the swing I have to take care of myself I think I'm going to put a break on that one of these days so it won't swivel on a side hill like this but I just can't emphasize enough what a boost this thing is I used to do a lot more concrete work this makes a good place to put handle tools and my 8 foot level will go in here I don't have anything in there right now it's a little hard on things they bounce around it where's the paint off but it's very secure set the person down on there nobody's getting into it if I have something heavy and I don't want to just put a really unreasonable load on the back corner of my truck ok now the truck supported I can pick up I don't know we're up close to the truck I can pick up probably twelve or fifteen hundred pounds and not not worry too much that welder I'll show you in a minute it weighs 750 pounds I can pick it up with the boom nearly all the way extended doesn't seem to mind it's a it's just a great rig so you can see this as a manual transmission coupling a manual transmission with a four-wheel-drive truck makes a very controllable power source so this is not a fancy truck 1998 it's an old truck it's only got 160,000 miles on it so it's got lots of life left but the thing that really sets this truck apart is it is a 7.3 liter Powerstroke diesel truck appreciators will tell you that is as good as you're going to do 7.3 liter power stroke ford engines and power trains are bulletproof they have so many characteristics that sort of set them apart that they're just they're just they're just dynamite now my personal experience agrees with that completely I've put a hundred thousand miles on this I put one starter in it that's it the glow plug relays are a little unreliable I replaced one or two of those but man it starts run it runs good it pulls hard the fuel economy is good I highly recommend the 7.3 liter power stroke I'm going to run this I think till I die or it dies whichever happens first it's just an excellent tool tank which is what I use it for so one of the things that I didn't anticipate when I was designing and helping George build this was how satisfying it is to get in a truck and start it every morning that it's got my fingerprints all over it that I know intimately and it's perfectly suited for what I do so think outside of the box a little bit you don't have to just drive a half-ton with a cross bed toolbox and a skill saw a tech set of tool bags don't be afraid to tackle work that requires a little more infrastructure don't be afraid to modify or design or build something that not only is something for a client but is for something that will contribute to your work process I love this truck I love building it I love owning it I love driving it I love working off of it I'm thankful to have it and thank you for your interest in this thing we never thought that a tool truck tour would be interesting to you guys but maybe it is thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 422,559

Rating: 4.9707656 out of 5

Keywords: Work Truck, Tool Truck, Shop Truck, Powerstroke, 7.3, diesel, Ford, Tool Tank, flatbed, one ton, hoist, truck crane, lumber rack, trailer hitch, toolboxes

Id: y2GmmvL-MPo

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/phuzy_nutz]

This is kinda like MTV Cribs.

[u/7mon]

First off it is a very well thought out truck. That being said he kind of looks like Hank from King of the Hill

[u/cxj05h]

"These are some tools here that I may need or may not."

[u/s7rcyr]

His channel intro video is amazingly inspiring! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BECuOfOulKE This is the male role model i need in my life.

[u/watertap]

Instantly made me think of the ice cream guy with the golden spoon.

[u/sla_je_vader]

I love it when these niche vids go viral. He talks in the video like he talks to his regular audience, like: "That's the control, you know, just an LB three quarter inch.. Electrical Aluminum LB". I'm like: "It's an electrical pound wtf?"...

[u/sew_butthurt]

I love this guy's attitude. Thanks for sharing.

[u/amurrikan]

I can't afford to buy all this stuff.

[u/HeyZuesHChrist]

"I keep wrenches in here."

I don't know why I'm still watching but I am.