Municipal and Government Fleets
Public Works Departments
The short answer
Public works bodies fail from what they carry, not from what hits them. We repair dump beds, refuse packer bodies, sweeper hoppers, tailgates and utility bodies at our Yorba Linda shop, including corrosion from brine, asphalt and leachate. Purchase orders accepted, with estimates itemized the way your finance office needs to see them.
01
What we see from this customer
A refuse body and a dump bed live in a chemical environment. Leachate sits in the bottom of a packer and works on the floor plate from inside. Hot asphalt cooks the liner and the coating off a dump body from the top down. Brine used on the grades toward San Bernardino and the mountain communities gets into every seam and stays there. The result is that the failure is almost never where the operator points. Visible rust on the outside of a dump body is usually the last stage of a floor that has been thinning from the inside for years.
Tailgates and hoppers take mechanical damage on top of the corrosion. A dump tailgate slammed by wet load for a decade develops elongated pin bores and cracked hinge ears, and then the gate hangs out of geometry, seals on one edge and gapes on the other. On a sweeper the hopper door and the elevator housing wear the same way. We rebuild the bores and the ears so the gate hangs on geometry again rather than shimming it into position. Cylinder mounts and hoist frame structure are in scope. Pump and valve overhaul is not.
What separates public works from most fleets is that the route runs tomorrow regardless. A residential refuse route does not get skipped, and a street scheduled to be swept ahead of a permit inspection gets swept. So the question at intake is never only what it costs, it is what it costs and how many days it takes. We will tell you which repairs can be staged across two visits and which ones have to be done once. All work is performed at our Yorba Linda facility. We do not run yard work.
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
Our route runs every single day. We cannot lose a packer for three weeks.
Tell us the route calendar at intake. We stage jobs where staging is possible, order parts before teardown, and we will say plainly when a repair cannot be split without doing the same work twice.
Concern 02
Rust keeps coming back on the same dump body no matter how many times it is painted.
Because it is being painted from the outside while it corrodes from the inside. Floor plate thinned by leachate or hot asphalt has to be cut out and replaced. A coating over thin plate buys one season.
Concern 03
The tailgate hangs crooked and will not seal, so we are leaving material on the street.
Elongated pin bores and cracked hinge ears are the usual cause. We rebuild the bores and the ears so the gate hangs on geometry again. Shimming a crooked gate moves the load somewhere else and cracks the next thing.
Concern 04
Our tarp system frame is bent and the tarp will not roll square across the bed.
Tarp frame, arm and pivot mounting is fabrication and welding work and it is in scope. A bent arm gets straightened or replaced and the pivot mount gets rebuilt square to the rail rather than packed with washers.
Concern 05
A big number goes out to formal bid and we lose two months waiting on an agenda.
We write the estimate itemized by operation, hours, rate, part number and part cost so your analyst sees the real number early. Where your code allows, we separate structural repair from deferred cosmetic work on two documents.
Concern 06
Nobody wants to touch a truck that comes in smelling like a landfill.
We do. Bring it washed out if you can. If you cannot, say so at intake and we plan the handling and cleaning time into the estimate instead of discovering it when a compartment gets opened.
03
Services you need most
Service
Fleet Collision Repair and Refinish
Fleet collision repair returns a damaged commercial truck or van to service after an impact, covering cab sheet metal, box structu
Service
Box and Cargo Body Repair, Aluminum and Composite
Box and cargo body repair rebuilds corner posts, rear frames, top rails, side skins, and floors on aluminum and composite dry van
Service
Cab Body Repair, Door Hood Fender and Bumper
Cab body repair addresses door, hood, fender, bumper, mirror, and step damage on a commercial cab without opening up a full collis
Service
Structural Welding and Fabrication
Certified in-shop welding and fabrication on steel and aluminum structure. Covers frame repair, custom bumpers and racks, reinforc
Service
Rust Treatment and Anti-Corrosion Coating
Rust treatment mechanically removes active corrosion, converts or encapsulates the sound pitted metal that remains, and applies pr
Service
Service Body and Utility Body Installation
Service and utility body installation mounts a new or transferred body to a chassis cab, including subframe, wiring, lighting, bum
Service
Paint and Refinish
Full paint and refinish strips, corrects, primes, and resprays the exterior of an RV, van, trailer, or fleet vehicle in single-sta
Service
DOT Reflective Tape and Compliance Marking
DOT conspicuity tape and compliance marking installs certified reflective sheeting and required lettering including USDOT numbers,
04
Vehicles you run
Vehicle
Dump Trucks
Dump bodies take abrasive load impact, hoist stress, and tailgate hardware abuse that no other truck body sees. Floor wear-through
Vehicle
Refuse and Recycling Trucks
Refuse bodies fight corrosion from acidic leachate on top of packer stress, hopper impact, and thousands of arm or tailgate cycles
Vehicle
Street Sweepers
Street sweepers combine a debris hopper, water tank, broom and conveyor systems, and continuous curb-line operation at walking spe
Vehicle
Utility Trucks
Utility trucks carry a compartmented service body loaded with tools, parts, and frequently a crane, and the compartments are where
Vehicle
Flatbed Trucks
Flatbed trucks carry unprotected loads on an open deck, so the deck, headboard, rub rails, and stake pockets take the damage rathe
Vehicle
Box Trucks
Box trucks put a separately built cargo body on a cab chassis, and the joint between them is where most failures start. Rear frame
05
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Can you repair a rusted dump body floor?
Yes, and repair means replacing plate rather than coating it. A dump floor that has carried hot asphalt, or a packer floor sitting in leachate, thins from the inside, so by the time rust shows on the outside surface the section is already compromised. We cut back to sound metal, replace the plate, treat the structure underneath it, and coat what goes back. Painting over thin plate buys you one season at most.
Do you work on refuse packer bodies and street sweeper hoppers?
Yes. Packer body panels, floor plate, tailgate structure, hopper doors, sweeper hopper and elevator housing repair are all body and structural work. Cylinder mounts, hoist frames and the structure a cylinder pushes against are in scope as fabrication and welding. What is not in scope is hydraulic pump and valve overhaul, engine, drivetrain or transmission work, or any form of DOT inspection.
The tailgate on our dump truck will not seal. Can that be fixed?
Usually yes, and it is almost never the seal. Elongated pin bores and cracked hinge ears from a decade of slamming let the gate hang out of geometry, so it seals along one edge and gapes on the other. We rebuild the bores and the ears so the gate hangs correctly again. Shimming a crooked gate into position just moves the load somewhere else and cracks the next component in line.
Our repair might exceed our formal bid threshold. How do you handle that?
By giving you the real number early, in a format your purchasing analyst can read. Every line is broken out by operation, hours, rate, part number and part cost, so the total is visible long before it becomes an agenda item. Where your purchasing code allows it, we separate the safety critical structural repair from deferred cosmetic work on two documents so the urgent piece is not held hostage.
Do you send anyone out to our corporation yard?
No. Everything is done at our Yorba Linda facility and we do not run yard or field work. For a public works fleet that means planning intake around the route calendar, which is worth doing regardless. Bring the unit washed out when you can, and if a body has held something we should know about before a compartment gets opened, tell us at intake. We would rather plan for it than find it.
Tell us what you run and what happened to it.