Dump Bodies & Steel Fabrication in Sun Valley, CA

The Sun Valley shop is on Penrose Street, in the industrial belt on the north side of the San Fernando Valley. This is the truck plant. Bodies get built, mounted and finished here, along with the equipment that goes on them: telescopic hoists, air gates, electric tarps and wet kits. Frame stretching and double frame work happen in the same bays.

The first question on a new body is not how much it holds. It is what the truck is allowed to carry. California Vehicle Code 35550 caps the gross weight on any one axle at 20,000 pounds, and 10,500 pounds on the wheels at one end of an axle. Section 35551 then limits what a group of axles can put on the road by how far apart the first and last axle of that group sit, topping out at 80,000 pounds, which a six axle group reaches at 45 feet and a five axle group only at 51 feet.

A body that holds more than the truck can legally haul is an expensive way to run light, so we start from the chassis and the axle spacing and size the body to that.

Our Super 10 is an elliptical body, 18 feet as standard, in AR400 through AR500 plate at 3/16 to 3/8 inch depending on the load, with a 156 telescopic hoist, an air gate with a double lock worked from the cab, and an electric tarp so the driver stays off the top of the load.

End dump trailers go the other way. High side carries light bulky material that fills the box before it makes weight. Low side suits dense material that makes weight first. Either one is an elliptical body in AR450 or AR500 at the same gauge range, with 1/4 inch draft arms, adjustable landing gear, air ride underneath, a 250 or 256 telescopic hoist and a barn door gate at the tail.

AR plate is abrasion resistant steel, hardened so the floor and the sides survive being dragged across every load. On a demo truck that matters more than raw strength. The gauge is the call customers get wrong most often, in both directions. Demo and scrap want the thick end of the range. Paying for 3/8 on a truck that hauls sand is weight you carry around for nothing.

Mounting is shop work, not a bolt-on. The subframe has to sit true on the chassis rails, the hoist has to line up so it lifts square, and the hydraulics and the air come off the truck's own systems. Alignment that is off shows up later as a body that twists under a loaded lift, and by then it is a frame problem rather than a body problem. The truck stays with us while that work is done.

Every body is built here in the USA from plate, not assembled from a kit. The other half of the work is repair. Cracked floors, blown welds, tailgates that will not seal, hoists that will not hold, and frames that need stretching to take a longer body. Where the steel is still sound we rebuild rather than replace, because on a body that is usually the cheaper answer by a wide margin.

Steel gates and fencing are built here too, on the same saws and in the same weld bays as the truck work. A San Fernando Valley homeowner or property manager gets a frame cut to the measured opening instead of a stock panel out of a catalog. We fabricate the gate or the fence here, then set the posts and hang it on site.

From Penrose Street we cover the San Fernando Valley and out through Burbank, Glendale, San Fernando and Calabasas, north through Santa Clarita, and up into the Antelope Valley where the Lancaster shop takes over. This shop runs weekdays, 8 to 5, and is closed on weekends, with someone on call.

The two shops keep separate phone numbers on purpose. Penrose Street is (818) 220-8707. The Lancaster shop has its own number, on its own page. Call whichever one is closer to you, because both of them build both sides of the line.

To quote a body we need the chassis, the cab to axle measurement, and what the truck is hauling. For a repair, a photo of the failure and the make of the hoist or the tarp usually gets us close enough to talk price before the truck moves.