Food Trucks Repair

A food truck is the most chemically hostile interior environment we work on. Cooking grease aerosolizes and lands on every surface, water is used constantly, cleaning chemistry is aggressive, and the whole thing then gets driven on the freeway where it flexes. Grease works into the floor seams, into the wall panel joints behind the equipment, and under the stainless. Then water sits on top of it. The result on a truck older than about four years is almost always the same, which is a soft floor at the equipment line and corrosion in the lower wall structure that nobody can see because there is a stainless panel over it.

The roof is the other problem. An exhaust hood penetration is a large opening through a roof, cut by a builder rather than a manufacturer, sealed with something that has to survive both the heat of the hood and the Southern California sun on the outside. Those seals fail. Add a generator exhaust penetration, a refrigeration condenser, and roof vents and you have four or five failure points on a roof that also flexes. Owners find it during the first December storm, and the water lands on electrical or on food prep surfaces, which is a shutdown rather than an inconvenience.

Structurally, the generator is the thing to watch. It is a heavy vibrating mass mounted to a body panel or a frame extension, running for eight to twelve hours at every event, and it works its mounting continuously. On trucks that work the Orange County event circuit, brewery lots, and film production catering across the LA basin, generator run hours climb fast. We repair floors, walls, roof penetrations, serving windows, and equipment and generator mounting, all in-shop at Yorba Linda at $210 per hour for body and $260 per hour for electrical work.