Body Builders

Providing pick-up and delivery fleets from Charlottetown to Boston-and beyond-with straight-truck van bodies built so tough that they often outlast their vehicle and are transferred to a new chassis may seem to be a strange specialty for a fellow who started out as a farmer, but Allison Drake has achieved just that.

“After I’d graduated from university in the mid-1970s, I started farming here in my home province of PEI,” Drake begins. “In the early Eighties, as the economy hit a downturn, I began building wooden livestock bodies for pick-up trucks as a sideline. I’d made a few for my own use, other people saw them and liked them, and by about 1983 I guess I’d built and sold 300 or more.”

Around that time, he also filled orders for a few wooden 24-foot van bodies for use hauling potatoes to the mainland, but his customers complained about the weight and bulk of that material, so he decided to investigate assembling aluminum van-body kits.

“I made an agreement with Champion Truck Bodies in Montreal, whereby they’d ship van kits to us and we’d assemble and sell them in a shop we’d set up,” Drake recalls. “That worked pretty well until 1989, when Champion went out of business. Then I decided to buy some of their equipment from the receiver and start building truck bodies from scratch right here.”

And that’s when Drake, self-educated in industrial design, decided to improve on the quality of the product. Dealing directly with London, Ont.-based Kaiser Aluminum, which had provided many of the aluminum extrusions for Champion, he upgraded the specifications.

“We increased the amount of aluminum per running foot, and redesigned the body for greater structural integrity, including providing two-inch-thick walls that are both stronger and can accommodate a greater amount of insulation for our many reefer customers,” he reports. “The aluminum extrusions we use for the body’s frame are 75% heavier than anything else out there on the market, which provides a significant increase in service life.”

Since straight-truck P&D operations are not as weight-sensitive as the linehaul tractor-trailer environment-and, for that matter, are also less likely to encounter weigh scales-the somewhat increased empty weight of the vehicle is not a problem for Drake customers.

“They’re more interested in the ruggedness and long life that our design can offer,” Drake explains. His firm is the only “total body manufacturer”- meaning it controls every aspect of construction from specifying the extrusions of raw aluminum to building the box to applying the paint and decals-in Eastern Canada or the northeastern United States.

Other design features that score points with clients who want long-lasting equipment include a rugged open-box-end cross-member construction for the body’s undercarriage, assembled with a continuous-weld process; an extra-deep, heavy-duty, one-piece lower rub rail; flange reinforcement on the extruded “Z-post” upright frame sections; and 45-degree-angled front corner posts that ward off direct impacts and also cut vehicle wind resistance.

The entire perimeter of the roof sheet is capped with extra aluminum to give greater bearing strength at rivet points. At the top corners, a recessed roof-rail channel protects and carries both the running lights and external wiring.

And Drake uses 3/8-inch plywood for the interior walls instead of the more common 1/4-inch, as well as 1-5/8-inch shiplap hardwood for the floor instead of the 1-1/8 or 1-3/8-inch product that many others employ.

Notwithstanding the popularity of his bodies with local users, Allison Drake knew that even the entire Atlantic Provinces region, with its population of just 2.5 million, wasn’t a big enough market to provide the growth he envisioned.

“So we started looking at the New England states in the early Nineties,” he says. “For the first few years I tried marketing directly, but that wasn’t efficient or successful, so then we undertook to find some distributors. Today, we have one in New Hampshire and are just concluding an agreement for another rep in south Boston. That’s really boosted our export sales.”

The two New England distributors also handle service, as do 10 other service-only reps located across the Maritimes as well as in Montreal and Toronto.

“With our plant here in PEI being relatively small and our 21 employees pretty well focused on new production, we want to have those contracted garages handle any service claims,” Drake says “We warranty our bodies for five years, and warranty claims represent less than one-half of one percent of our total expenses each year-which reflects the durability of our product.”

Drake Truck Bodies currently builds between 150 and 175 bodies a year, and about 25% to 30% of those are exported to the New England states. Gross sales in 1998 came in at about $2 million. In a typical year, Drake says, the flow of orders is rather seasonal, with the first half of the year being a lot busier than the last half.

“But 1998 was different,” he notes. “Happily, we’ve been able to keep all of our workers on staff here right through the year.”

While the typical design that Drake produces would be a 26- or 28-foot body for a tandem-axle straight truck, they regularly address other applications as well. “We build refrigerated bodies up to 30 or 31 feet in length, and reefer bodies comprise upwards of half of our annual production,” Drake says. “And also 41-foot furniture vans, mounted on chassis that are within one inch of the road-legal maximum length. We also can provide a full 13-foot, five-inch height from the ground to the centre of the roof, which also maximizes interior space for furniture movers.

“Another specialty is design and modification of tailgates: we recess them into the floor of the truck so that they then fold out, saving upwards of a foot of space that can be used for interior cargo area. We’ve shared that design with Maxon Liftgates, and I understand they’re working with Mond Industries in Toronto to incorporate this idea into some of their products,” he reveals. Drake also has created a tuck-away tailgate loader that retracts into the sidewall of a “drone box” (a nine-foot-long-by-nine-feet-high general storage compartment on many moving-van tractors, built behind the sleeper to hold straps and other specialized mover equipment) and flips out when needed.

The small but active firm has also built five semi-trailers (two 38-foot and three 42-footers) over the years, three of which were multi-temperature reefers, with split bulkheads and rear evaporators. “I believe we’re the only truck-body manufacturer in Canada who can build a semi-trailer using straight-truck-body extrusions,” Drake points out.

And what does the future hold for this innovative outfit? “We sell a lot of product to leasing companies, because of the durability we can offer,” Allison Drake notes. “And we expect to do even more of that. Leasing outfits today are pushing out the length of their terms, some as long as eight years-and that’s where our van bodies really pay off, since we design for 15- or even 20-year lifespans.

“The new Confederation Bridge is certainly an improvement over ferry service for our delivery of trucks, and we’re currently in discussions with a Toronto-area potential distributor, so we may be increasing our profile in Central Canada soon.

“At the moment, I’d say our plant’s producing at about 35% of maximum capacity, and I’d like to see that grow to 75% to 80%, which we could achieve without having to physically expand the facility. But I don’t ever expect to grow into being a massive producer,” Drake sums up.

“Like I tell everybody: we don’t want to make a huge number of truck bodies.we just want to build good ones!”