We Bought A Truck That DUMPS!

The last few years, on countless occasions, one of us has said, “It would be so much easier if we could just dump this.” We considered buying a trailer that dumped, but already having two trailers for different uses, we thought three would be overkill. Then we mulled over the idea of converting our current truck by buying an insert that dumped. Didn’t really want to do that since it is our only vehicle. Like a dog with a bone, Jim searched online and finally came across this truck for sale.

In our search we knew we only wanted a diesel truck and that narrowed down our possibilities considerably. They are hard to find, seems when someone owns one they don’t want to sell, and we didn’t want to buy new. We found this one half way across the country in Ottawa. We had it shipped to us a few weeks ago.

First thing we had to do was get insurance (of course), get it licensed, and safety inspected. Next we needed to put higher sides on it. For this, Jim got out four 2 x 12″ poplar boards and we measured and cut them to length.

Then I set about painting them red.

I used up a whole quart of red paint and changed to black to paint the other side because that is what we had on hand.

Meanwhile Jim had to make some modifications to the truck bed to hold the boards in place. There were already steel tabs to hold the bottom boards so we needed to add four more tabs to hold the top boards. Two on each side of the truck.

Jim used the plasma cutter to cut four pieces of steel.

I didn’t get a chance to catch him welding the steel on but once the tabs were in place he used the grinder to smooth everything out.

Then it was time to add our newly crafted side panels.

And here is the other side all finished.

This is a picture of the dump raised up just because we can.

We even made a sign for the drivers door.

All that work meant we are now geared up to get started on the pile of firewood I showed you earlier. Speaking of firewood…Jim built this contraption firewood processor in order to make cutting the firewood easier. Should do the trick.

Neat or what? I’ll show you how it works later.

Before I go…I wanted to tell you that our neighbour is away for a week or so and asked us to chicken sit. Sort of like puppy sitting only with chickens. And not as much fun. We only have to go check on them once a day to feed them and give them water. There are five of them.

Oh, and we get to keep all the eggs. On average there are four to five eggs a day! Gotta get baking.

Later