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Fabricating and mounting a “quick-quote,” heavy-duty utility truck rack

Front view of the rack.
Photo courtesy of Barnes MetalCrafters.

In certain situations, bidding or quoting on a job at the tip of a hat can be pretty dangerous. Sometimes you may think the job is similar to one you have done in the past, so you throw a number out there. Some customers squeal, some say, “Cool, run with it,” and others think about it.

Being in a custom job shop, we see situations like this quite often. I’ve mentioned walk-in customers in a previous blog post, but the quick-quote jobs always are a lot more work than a 10-minute gig.

We had a quick-quote project come our way around Christmas this past year in the form of a brand-new Dodge® 3500 Dually utility truck. The customer wanted to take advantage of the 179 tax credit and begin customizing his new work rig before he hit 1,000 miles. He wanted to add a material rack for his truck similar to what he had on his previous truck.

Most utility truck owners have gone to the bolt-on aluminum ladder racks, which are fairly inexpensive and can be put together quickly. For this reason, we hadn’t fabricated one in a long time, especially one as big as this customer had in store for us.

My dad, Tim Martin, went out to start measuring the job and talk with the customer about the design. He wanted to put full 20-ft. lengths of pipe and other materials on the rack. The frame of the 6-ft.-wide rack was to be made of C3 channel, 1.5-in. by 2.5-in. by 3/16-in. angle cross members, ¾- in. uprights, and a 1-in. by 1-in. by 3/16-in. angle around the top.

The truck was massive. It had to be to hold something like this. The customer told us he wanted the rack to mount to the corners of the front bumper and also to base plates on the utility box. It needed to stop a few feet short of the tailgate, so that he could stand on the gate to retrieve material.

Keep in mind that this was right around Christmas, and our shop was pretty busy. We didn’t have all day to invest in engineering a material rack for a new truck. Some jobs like this are done with a main idea and a lot of improvising. Besides, we didn’t know if we were even going to get the job.

Tim and I discussed the project a little, and he told the customer he could get him a number soon. There was no way we could get the job done without material and a limited holiday work schedule. If he wanted us to do the job, he would have to wait.

A couple of weeks later, we got the call and learned we had to begin working on this massive rack. Our price was fair, and for that moment, it was priced correctly.

Tim pulled out his notes and sketches and started dusting them off. This was a pretty straightforward frame with legs, so we didn’t need to lay it out in CAD or anything.

Quick sketch and material cut sheet.
Photo courtesy of Barnes MetalCrafters.

The material arrived, and we started cutting it on the saw and coping the angles. George Boydstun, one of our fabricators, began laying the frame out on the table and tacking it together. Others in the shop thought we were making a full-size car trailer. When they found out this was a roof rack, they wanted to see the truck.

The rack frame was mostly welded out when the customer arrived. We were to keep the truck overnight and mount the monster. It seemed fairly uncomplicated, until we lowered the back four plates on the top of the utility box.

I was in the office when fabricator Randy Davis came in and said, “We have a problem.” The utility box was constructed mostly of 16-ga. metal. The rack was so heavy it was going to buckle the utility box.

Randy, lead-fabricator Nick Trueheart, and I put our heads together and came up with an oversized base plate with a channel mounted underneath. This would solve the immediate problem until we could figure out how to mount the rack to the front bumper.

Mounting the rack to the front bumper would have been fine around a decade ago, but this bumper was made of soda cans. You can’t have a beefcake roof rack mounted to thin metal. I could grab the outside of the bumper and move it with my hands.

We discovered this problem right before closing time, so we would tackle it the next morning. We jokingly gave each other homework assignments to figure out how to mount the thing.

The next day we had the customer come in so we could explain our dilemma. We didn’t want to start drilling holes in his brand-new truck. The rack wasn’t going to work as he planned.

We decided to remove the tow hooks and fabricate a bumper that would bolt in their place. We then would tie in the corners of the rack and have a nice sturdy frame. This is where my Inventor® skills came into play, and I helped the guys come up with a quick drawing of how this would work.

Another problem arose with the hood. When raised, it cleared the front of the ladder rack, but would smack the next cross member. We didn’t want this brand new truck with a crease in the hood, and correcting this problem was an easy fix.

The customer ended up letting us have the truck until we were completely finished. That worked out for building the rack, but we didn’t want this truck floating around our shop. So we ended up putting a lot more effort into the rack than we had intended. A 1.5-man job turned into a group effort to make sure this “haus” (Southern-speak for horse) was gonna work.

Sketch and quick-quote sheet.
Photo courtesy of Barnes MetalCrafters.

A couple coats of primer and a couple coats of black paint later, we were ready to mount the beast back on the Dodge. It turned out nice in the end, but the forethought wasn’t there in the beginning.

You can’t win them all, but you can learn from them all. Everyone at the shop got a smile out of the project’s completion, and so did the customer. It turned out to be one tough-looking rig.

About the Author
Barnes MetalCrafters

Nick Martin

2121 Industrial Park Drive SE

Wilson, NC, 27893

252-291-0925