Bringing the service truck (or utility truck) saga to a close, I am adding a few heavy duty examples. Service trucks of this size and rating appear to mostly be dedicated to either maintaining and repairing heavy off road equipment, or to the maintenance and repair of the largest on-road equipment.
Economic necessity means choosing the least expensive, generally lightest capacity vehicle, with which to accomplish the assigned tasks. Few users need the largest vehicles, but when they do, the trucks tend to be dedicated to a single purpose, say, water well drilling, heavy truck or bus towing, or refueling. As such, the extensive cabinetry and layout of a traditional service truck is not necessarily part of the rig (though cabinets often get stuck here and there, around the main installed equipment).
That said, field service and maintenance can still require an all-in-one truck loaded with parts, tools, and the typical dedicated equipment (lift, generator, compressor, welder). As the servicing is often done far from headquarters or any permanent maintenance facility, the heavy duty service truck, when such a capacity is necessary, is put into the field. These heavy trucks typically are built on a heavy truck cab-and-chassis, such as Kenworth, Peterbilt, or Mack. They share most of the features of the medium duty trucks, but on a larger scale, with a higher rating and capacity for work. Like the lighter duty trucks, white wasn’t always the universal color, but recent builds are generally painted white.
All service trucks can incorporate certain vanity items, such as diamond plate trim, a fancy paint job, or vinyl logo wrap. But the heavy trucks seem to be the place where excess and extravagance can be most extreme. Once one leaves behind the constraint of economy of cost to purchase, outfit, and operate, anything is possible. Service trucks are not exactly aspirational things, but that doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere, isn’t trying to build the biggest, baddest service truck ever seen. With that in mind, I present a blue and silver Peterbilt. The detailing and polish suggest that this is either a show rig, or one that is exceptionally expensively fitted out and well maintained.
The further one goes up the service truck pecking order, the more specialized and dedicated to a specific task is the functionality of the truck. Along the way, many of the traditional service truck features get reduced in significance or entirely done without. In the meantime, service truck features can be added to builds that ordinarily wouldn’t carry such attributes. I am thinking here specifically of heavy duty tow trucks and fire fighting rigs, that incorporate arrays of externally accessible tool and equipment cabinets that lesser versions often do not carry. As these big rigs tend to incorporate an “all-in-one” build-out philosophy, features of a service truck become part of, but not central to, the various functions of the truck.
Doubling back to the concept of a service truck generally, the rigs are all around us, every day. Like counting Beetles as a kid, or perhaps counting Miatas or Teslas today, one realizes how many of them are out there, invisibly going about their work and tasks. As the basic service body weighs in the neighborhood of one thousand pounds and up, none of these trucks are truly “light duty”, and their capacity starts at one-ton, and goes way up from there.
Given that service trucks are largely, but not entirely, a North American phenomenon, it is interesting to me that the rest of the world has mostly failed to incorporate service trucks into their fleets of work trucks. Is the service truck an anomaly that somehow took root in the U.S.? Is the functional capacity and layout inappropriate to most of the rest of the world? Does it have something to do with a peculiarly American identity? Is the modularity of American cab-and-chassis truck construction not carried over into the rest of the world? Are the economics of service truck capacity versus intended use not economic for other parts of the world?
I actually lean a bit towards that last explanation, simply because work trucks are the ultimate “form and function packaged economically as efficiently as possible”. A work truck is primarily chosen for fitness to the task, at the most minimal purchase and operating cost, with maximum longevity and reliability. Perhaps the service truck pencils out in the American economy in a way that it does not do in other places. Given that the trucks, with their hefty size and weight, are not particularly fuel and cost efficient to operate, relative to other choices, maybe potential buyers in other places can’t make the economic math work out. Fuel has generally been cheaper in North America than in most other places, even as distances to job sites often tend to be further out in the field in North America.
Maybe it comes down to the service truck just being an American thing, with no other significant meaning or implications. Given that transportation has been so internationalized, to the point where a car built in the U.S., Germany, or Japan usually has no real appearance or functional difference, the peculiarity of the American service truck can be celebrated for nothing greater than “they are common here, but nonexistent in most other places”. Perhaps that is enough.
Related:
A History of Light Duty Service Trucks
A Visit With Some Medium Duty Service Trucks
Thank you for an interesting and informative series! I was previously unaware that these were an entirely North American phenomenon.
It’s interesting that, while this is almost unknown in Europe, the moment the Euro-van cab-and-chassis started arriving in the US, Americans were putting service bodies on them. One of the local RAM dealers used to have a couple dozen on the lot at any given moment, before everything got scarce.
I would guess work trucks do exist in other areas of the world.
Judging by some of the really nice European rigs I’ve seen here I’ll bet there are some very tricked out work trucks in Europe.
Same for Japan and the Lands down under.
I’ve seen some really nice equipment from the Japanese market.
Perhaps Johannes Dutch and Kiwibryce can provide some proof of this.
Here’s an example of a typical service truck in NL/Europe. In this case, built for a supplier/dealership of concrete mixer trucks/semi-trailers and concrete pumps.
Here’s a great collection of pictures on the coachbuilder’s website, to give you an idea of what’s aboard:
https://www.elenbaas.nl/project/mobiele-service-truck/
Service trucks have an enclosed body, apart from recovery trucks, wreckers, tow trucks, mobile cranes, etc.
That is an interesting truck for sure. From the posted picture I was a bit confused at first but once I saw the pictures with it raised above the vehicle those railings made a lot more sense.
Vans.
The answer is vans.
This has been a really interesting series of articles. These are always the sort of trucks ive found to be a cool piece of blue collar Americana. Utility/service vehicles really don’t exist here in the UK in the same mould as the US vehicles.
Utility companies tend to use Defenders or Hiluxes with modified van or box bodies containing equipment and most ‘workshop’ style service vehicles are normally standard looking LWB Transits or Sprinters with a custom built interior to suit the role.
Dear Johannes, Thanks once more for your expose. Indeed, North America has some interesting workhorses! Having sold them, i can tell you that the detailed work to ensure that these rigs are correct in every way takes much time. I have my stories, too of mishaps. One was from a truck dealership that undercut my price and delivered a mess. The customer was desperate to get the trucks into service. From order to delivery took more than nine months. However, the next order was a purchase order to the dealership where I was working. Amongst the lazy way out cost cutting tricks of the “undercutter” was to not route the vertical exhaust properly. The result was that despite the heat shield, the drivers were entering the cab and getting burned. I had worked with the body company and the truck manufacturer, Autocar, to have the exhaust placed to aovid this. It cost more. My price reflected it. Memories, Johannes. Thanks again!
Thomas, this great piece is written by another Dutch…he seems to be 6 years older than me 🙂
Thomas, undercutting vendors and dealers was always a concern. What was the next “trick” they would try to get the bid? Or what would they try to slip by you. I had a 4×4 truck deliver to me with the wrong axle ratios. Dealer took it back and tried to make it look like it had been taken apart, we checked the ratios when it returned and still not correct, send it back, again. You could flat out refuse the truck but that required a ton of paperwork and then you have to order another truck and maybe wait anywhere from 6-12 months to get a new one.
We tried reverse bids, multiple awards but the shysters would always find some new loop hole to crawl thru.
The fun part working for the DOT was all the weird stuff to be designed, built, delivered, serviced, repaired and disposed of. Cradle to grave.
Service trucks can be job specific theres a hydraulic hose repair truck that lives in our tanker yard, thats all it does callouts for hose repairs, most truck problems get towed to a repair facility
Roadside repairs do take place when I ran out of air on the Kaimais a guy turned up in a Hilux loaded with tools and did a temporary repair to get me going again,
most trucks I see outfitted like the ones in this post belong to rail or electricity line companies,
Heavy duty tow trucks look like the above examples the Sterling I was driving ate the rear diff I stopped where I could and a tow truck completed its delivery but could not tow truck and trailer far too much weight and length another tanker ballasted with water was brought for me to tow my trailer and deliver its contents.
In the Chicago area we have lots of “hi-railers”, trucks that can also run on rails. I don’t know if other continents have many other than Unimogs, but I would think so. They can be like service trucks gone insane. The small ones run on an incredibly narrow (4′ 8 1/2″, rail gague) track, using bizarre aluminum wheels to narrow it down. Large ones often have racks that can hold rails above and outside the cab. This is the Wikipedia Commons link: ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Road-rail_vehicles_in_the_United_States ).
Network Rail in the UK maintain the country’s whole rail infrastructure and have quite a fleet of road/rail vehicles. Land Rovers, Ford Rangers, Iveco pick ups, MAN trucks and Unimogs amongst others.
I think some of the difference here is culture plus economics. The US already loves open bodied pickups over vans for a lot of jobs other parts of the world use vans for so you have that as a start. Then you have different work flows, guys like the idea of quick access to tools from the ground when working outside, no need to go up steps into a van body. I think it’s the philosophy of a rolling workshop versus a rolling tool box.
Then you have specialization. In the US the trucks will have a welder crane etc all onboard. My limited experience with the trades in Europe (mostly yachts) is they would be more likely to call in someone else if a crane is needed or a welder etc.
In addition to differing work styles distance may be a consideration. In a compact European country you many be only an hour away form base where a job site in the US could be 5 hours.
The closest equivalent to a US style service body may the German/Austrian fire engines called Rustwagen (equipment wagon) which have a body with lots of compartments for tools and equipment for rescue and salvage and larger ones sometimes have a crane on the back like my HO model.