Skip to content
OCRVEmpire

Commercial and Business Fleets

Construction Companies

The short answer

Construction trucks come in modified, not stock. Service bodies swapped, racks added, mounts welded on by whoever was available. We repair job site damage, fabricate ladder racks and equipment mounts, and treat the corrosion that concrete slurry and cured mortar leave behind. Structural welding is performed in shop at Yorba Linda by certified technicians.

01

What we see from this customer

The first thing we do on a construction truck is figure out what it actually is now. A ten year old F-550 in a Fontana or Chino yard has usually been through three configurations: a flatbed, then a service body, then a crane mount someone added without gussets. Each change left holes, brackets and welds behind. When you bring it in with a bent compartment door, we still have to know what is carrying load, because half the time the frame has been drilled through the flange somewhere it should not have been and that is where the crack will start.

Concrete is harder on a truck body than salt air is. Wet slurry sits in the seams of a dump bed and inside service body compartments, it holds moisture against bare steel for days, and the alkalinity strips whatever coating was there. What you see is a bubble in the paint at a lower compartment corner. What is under it is usually a section of steel with half its thickness gone. We cut back to sound metal, treat, and coat rather than filling and painting, because filler over active corrosion on a work truck comes back within a season.

On downtime, a service truck that is down is a crew standing around, so the calculation is a crew day, not a truck day. That changes what is worth expediting. Tell us the crew size riding on that unit and we will sequence around it. Fabrication such as ladder racks, crane mounts, tool mounting and headache racks is designed and priced before we cut stock, and it happens here in Yorba Linda. We do not send a truck out to a job site to work on it, and we do not do engine, drivetrain or transmission repair.

Location: All work is performed at our Yorba Linda facility. We do not offer mobile, roadside, or fleet route service.

02

What you are worried about, and the answer

Concern 01

The truck has been modified three times since new and nobody wants to touch it

Modified is normal here. We survey what is actually on the truck and what is carrying load before we plan anything, including previous drilling through frame flanges, brackets from a body that is long gone, and welds added without preparation. That survey is frequently where we find the real problem, and it is the reason we can put a fourth configuration on a truck that has already had three.

Concern 02

Rust keeps coming back at the same compartment corners no matter how many times it gets painted

Because it was painted, not repaired. Concrete slurry holds moisture against steel and consumes section from the inside of a seam outward, so by the time paint bubbles the metal underneath has already lost thickness. We cut back to sound steel, treat what remains, coat it, and address the drainage or seam that trapped the slurry in the first place. That last step is the one that gets skipped.

Concern 03

A truck down means a crew standing around, which costs more than the repair does

Then tell us the crew number, not the truck number. A unit carrying a six man crew justifies expediting parts and running overtime hours in a way a spare pickup does not. We will price both paths honestly, including the case where the fastest option is not the cheapest one, and let you make the call on real numbers.

Concern 04

We need custom mounting or a rack built and most body shops will not fabricate

Fabrication is in-house. Ladder racks, crane and hoist mounts, headache racks, tool and compressor mounting, tie-down and D-ring installation, receiver and gooseneck work, skid plates. You see the design and the price before we cut material. Aluminum and steel are welded to different procedures, because aluminum structure welded like steel cracks at the heat-affected zone, usually within a year.

Concern 05

A previous weld on the frame cracked and we do not know if the truck is safe to load

Bring it in before you load it again. A cracked weld on a frame rail almost always means the original repair restored the condition that failed rather than addressing why it failed. We grind the failed weld out, correct the joint preparation, and gusset or reinforce so the load moves differently. All structural welding is certified and performed at our Yorba Linda facility.

Concern 06

Job site damage is constant and low grade and it never seems worth stopping for

It is worth batching. Compartment doors that no longer latch, bent rack uprights, torn mud flaps, gouged bed rails and crushed corner posts individually are not worth a trip. Six of them on one truck are. Fleets that run a quarterly catch-up visit per unit spend meaningfully less than fleets that wait until a door will not close at all.

03

Services you need most

04

Vehicles you run

05

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Can you install or swap a service body or utility body?

Yes. Service and utility body installation, removal, and swap between chassis, including subframe fabrication where the mounting pattern does not line up. On a swap we check the donor body for corrosion in the compartment floors and the lower seams first, because moving a rusted body onto a good chassis is money spent twice. Electrical and lighting are re-run rather than spliced into whatever was there.

Can you fabricate a ladder rack or a crane mount?

Yes. Racks, crane and hoist mounts, headache racks, tool and compressor mounting, and tie-down systems are fabricated in shop. You approve the design and the price before we cut stock. On a crane mount we look at how the load reaches the frame, because a mount bolted or welded to a rail without gusseting concentrates the moment in one spot and that is where it cracks.

The bottom of our dump bed is rusted through. Repair or replace?

It depends on how much section is left in the side walls and the understructure, not on how the floor looks. A floor is a straightforward panel replacement. If the cross members and the lower side wall have lost thickness too, you are rebuilding the bed and replacement usually wins. We cut into it, measure what is sound, and price both so you can decide on real numbers.

Do you do engine or transmission work on work trucks?

No. We do not perform engine, drivetrain, transmission, or DOT inspection work. What we do is body, structure, frame, welding and fabrication, corrosion treatment, refinish, equipment mounting, lighting installation, and reflective marking. Keep your mechanical shop for the driveline and use us for everything from the frame rails out. That division is clean and it avoids surprises on both sides.

Will you work on a truck someone else already modified badly?

Routinely. That is most of what walks in. The survey comes first so we know what is load-bearing and what is decoration, and we will tell you plainly if a previous modification has to come out before the repair you asked for can be done correctly. Sometimes the honest answer is that fixing the prior work is the bigger half of the job.

Tell us what you run and what happened to it.