Since we’re on a pickup kick here this morning, let’s pick up the tempo and keep the party going a bit longer. I saw this in a parking lot and was a bit perplexed by the bed on this Mazda. I’ve seen plenty of homemade flatbeds on pickups, but this one was decidedly different. I’m still scratching my head.
It’s obviously home made, with the wood floor and wheel housings, which are less than ideal for our wet climate. Quite a bit of work has gone into it. But for what purpose? For that matter, it’s not even a genuine flatbed.
I think some guy had some materials laying around and decided to show off his fabrication skills. It looks pretty well done.
That’s my feeling as well. More about the craftsmanship than about the end-use perhaps. I really like it.
This looks similar to a stake body truck, only with fancy tube metalwork where normally you would see just wooden stakes.
The skids would seem to imply heavy loads, as would the low load floor (which causes the wheel wells to intrude, unlike the raised floor of a true stake body truck).
Someone clearly went to a lot of trouble to make this, as the quality of the metalwork is quite good (and the woodwork is not terrible either).
Perhaps the purpose was in the fabrication, not the specific appearance.
Some people enjoy making custom objects using existing skills and materials,
I think it’s well done , spacious, low loading floor and uses common materials for fabrication. The tube side rails make sense, with strength for tying down loads, while being relatively cheap and easy to assemble.
A true flatbed would be easier to make, but they sit a bit higher; more sway with heavier loads and more difficult to load.
That there’s a parade float, my friend. Add some bunting around the perimeter, a blonde and a few kids waving and get ready to cast your vote after you finish your hot dog.
“That there’s a parade float, my friend.”
Yup. Or just a party platform. Last time I saw something like that, they had couches on it, a half-dozen drunks, and a blender powered by a two-stroke weedwacker engine, all set into a center table that also carried the booze and glasses.
Around here, carless folks have a habit of pushing grocery store shopping carts all the way home. Turns out they are really expensive, and the grocery stores pay a bounty to get them back. Folks make some side cash trolling less-fortunate neighborhoods, rounding up the carts, and returning them to the appropriate grocery store.
I’ve seen quite a few homebrew rigs like this one, though perhaps not as nicely done. I’ll bet that bed is precisely 2 grocery carts wide, and 10 (nested) grocery carts deep. I’m not sure about the intruding wheel wells, though, but grocery carts are heavy, and the lower loading height might be worth the tradeoff for the intrusive wheel wells.
Evan,
Yes, grocery carts, especially the steel wire versions are quite expensive, often exceeding $150 each. Think about this: if a large super market has 200 steel wire carts sitting outside, that’s $30,000 in an inventory that isn’t sold.
As someone who has owned plenty of open trucks, from simple 1/2 ton pickups to large rollback tow units, I’ve often grabbed a cart or 2 & dropped them off at the proper store, no store ever offered me a reward.
I’ve never heard of a store that will pay to get a cart back. Word would quickly get around the ‘hood that the store was offering something of value for carts, with plenty of “lowlifes” grabbing carts after hours, only to return them in the morning.
About 30 years ago Heathrow airport in London installed rental luggage carts in automated rows. At the dispensing end, you put in several single Pound coins and the machine released a cart. When you returned the cart at the deposit end of the rack, it would return a single Pound coin.
Problem soon developed where the homeless and other less fortunate people were grabbing carts, sometimes by knocking off people’s luggage when they were not looking, and then run the cart over to the return point, grabbing the coin for themselves. I remember being accosted by several guys who were offering to do me the favor of returning the cart, even while I was still using it!
A newspaper report back in the day said these guys could make upwards of 100 Pounds a day on busy & holiday days. The final solution to the problem was to stop refunding the coin.
“I’ve often grabbed a cart or 2 & dropped them off at the proper store, no store ever offered me a reward.”
I actually have no real idea if there’s a reward or bounty here, but I can’t imagine folks are building specialized rigs for grocery cart hauling just out of the goodness of their hearts.
A grocery store chain here installed a system that reminded me of the zappers that some people have to keep their dogs in the yard.
As far as I could tell there were wires under the pavement at the exits, and each cart had a wheel containing a sensor. The wheel would lock up when the cart was taken over the wire.
A problem that I saw was that the wheels would occasionally lock up when the carts were in the store. They don’t have them any more.
In the US, ALDI is known for a system much like the one that Bill described at Heathrow: You insert a quarter (the largest denomination of US coin that the majority of people actually use), and the cart unlocks. When you return the cart, you get your quarter back.
Saves on the labor of having to round up carts and bring them back to the store entrance, and you don’t have a parking lot littered with carts by people who are too inconsiderate to return them to the corrals.
Standard practice here in the Netherlands, not only at Aldi.
Most stores give out free tokens to use instead of Euro coins.
With the pandemic the system is disabled in most stores.
I think we have a winner here, with the grocery cart angle. Note that the skids are not really skids at all, but tracks that hold the “wide in back and narrow in front” wheeled grocery carts, two wide on the bed. The big screws holding those “tracks, not skids” in place are not recessed, and would likely tear up both the load and the tracks, by hooking the load as it slid along, if they were used as skids.
And come to think of it, the sides of this truck do bear a resemblance to supermarket parking-lot cart corrals.
For this reason, 20 years ago when I first moved to this neighborhood, our local grocery had metal fencing up with spaces wide enough for a human, but too narrow for a cart. These were right outside the building, so you couldn’t even wheel it out into the parking lot.
I knew the neighborhood was changing when those got cut down a few years later.
In one local city, about 20 years ago, the city decided to fight the shopping carts that people abandoned. Instead of prosecuting the people who take the carts they fine the stores who’s carts they find.
Reminds me of a truck used by the fence-builders who did my fence several years ago. The same side-opening gate above the bed. They were mainly hauling boards and metal channels, plus a couple of bigger things like wheelbarrows and cement tubs. They had put their fence-building talents to good use, making the truck a display window for skill.
(Incidentally, their skill was tested and proved by three major windstorms that knocked down many other fences and trees. Their work is still vertical.)
It’s a MazdaToon. If they can build a Peter Toon they can surely build one smaller scale.
Looks like a small hay truck to me. Pack it right, you can get six bales in there. Lol!
That was my first thought, as well…12 bales if you’re willing to stack and strap!
More like a small Hay-Ride truck….
One or more guys with extra time on their hands wanting to do something challenging, fun, and unique.