Dog Box Flatbed

I’ve got a custom one-off going on right now in the shop. The bed is for a 2019 1 ton ford single wheel. The customers requests were for a unskirted flatbed with a trough, and he wanted to add some long boxes down the sides and a big dog/toolbox up front. This bed is being built to he purely functional, so I’m struggling with trying to make it look at least a little nicer than a straight work bed. I haven’t been taking pictures much this far but here’s where we’re at:

4” channel for the frame rails, 3” channel for the crossmembers. The trough is framed with 4” channel and we used 1/2” for the gooseneck plate. The tailboard, rest of the trough, deck, and front box are all going to be 1/8” floor plate. For the towing package i dropped down some 3/8” plate with a slot for 4”x4”x1/4” tubing. I ran the receiver through both sides of that tubing, then welded a piece of 3/8” to the bottom with the chain hook holes that run back to the vertical plate to sure it all up. The long boxes are 7x12x48” and we’re pre-fabbed.

Front box is drawn up on CAD

Sweet! I bet it turns out nice!!!

Box is all cut out and tacked together. Test fit looks good, we will finish weld out tomorrow and install some slide out drawers.

Looks great

Today we pulled ithe box of food the truck and worked on welding it up and adding some other goodies. Screwdriver/hammer rack on the toolbox side along with wrench hangers. We added some tubing to the sides for the drawer slides to weld to, but we will wait until after powdercoat to install those so they don’t melt. We are mounting an on demand air compressor from Oasis in the bottom of the box. These things run off of 12 volts and can power a 1/2” impact without a tank. This customer is having us build him a small reserve tank anyways, it will be welded up and bolted in the box as well.

Looking good! Thanks for posting up the pics!

Looks great. What is he going to use for added suspension? Bags.

It’s getting 7500# bags and a Bluetooth compressor system. Overall this bed won’t be much heavier than a TM or Pronghorn style bed though.

Rear underbody boxes are welded up, fuel/def situation is handled, and I drew up some drip rails for the lights on the tailboard. We don’t have a press brake so all of the bends are done with relief cuts by hand.

Lookin good, Mike!

Lots of man hours right there.

Amazing work as always.....

Thanks for sharing!

How we ended up for the week. Headache rack was a pain to figure out being two different heights. The doors went on pretty dang square, got all the gussets on the sides, and for the stake pockets on for the rub rail. So far we’re at 38 shop hours/65 man hours.

Looking good.....pretty dang productive use of the hours burned....

What’s taking so long? You gonna put a floor on it

Next time the geometry stumps you, you can call me.

Hell, I burned 35 hours in a little wood box and thought I was smoking.....something like that would take me months.....

And that Sir, is why man made grinders........

Looks great, you definitely have some skills.

Sometimes all the math can be dead nuts on but it still looks like hell

The difference between art and science....

Looks good, but why only one stake pocket on the rear?

You still need 2 to make it look symmetrical. Besides his dollar is paying for it.

It’s been an internal battle leaving it as one. I may cave before it’s said and done, I can build him a tailboard to fit in them

Sounds like you've already made the decision and have a plan for caring it out....

#TM

Rub Rail is on, headache rack is on its way to being done, and I added the safety chain hookups for the gooseneck trough.

We are under the gun to finish so my pic taking has gone downhill but here is how it sits today. Just a few more small things and it’s ready for powdercoat! All of the stuff for the wiring already has wire fished through to make it easy before install.

Turned out really nice....as always....

Looking good! Love that stake design change.

All done, ready for me to wire it up! This was a cool build, I haven’t had a lot of opportunity the past two years to actually put my hands on a project for the duration of it but this one has only been touched by me and my brother. He is headed back to dfw to work, so this was a good one to end on with him. I’ll post up pics of the wire up process, we built an air tank for the compressor as well that will he installed. Air bags are going on the truck as we speak.

Thats nice. I hope you post pics after he gets the dog boxes installed.

That really turned out nice....can't wait to see it on the truck....

As always, might fine work Sir!

Not much anything purtier than custom rigged worked trucked.

He wasted no time putting it to work. Pulled into the yard, dropped his old one and hooked the new one onto a 32’ triple axle hauling 20 steers and a few goats.

I have a video of that air compressor zipping off the lugnuts on the back tire, I’ll see if it will load.

How many hours in the build?

Wow!!

91 shop hours including install, man hours about 200

That turned out amazing.....I'm sure he loved it!

Great work!

That looks awesome. Now I see the dog box, I thought you meant he was going to mount like Diamond plate aluminum boxes on top, sorry the quail hunter in me got all excited and ran with it.