Terry Thornburg of Chandler’s Cabinet Supplier Plywood company in Huntington, West Virginia felt he needed more economical, versatile distribution. “I had an idea of a demountable truck body system where we could handle our straight trucks like a tractor trailer. The system would have a lifter mounted on the truck, and there would be legs on the truck body,” he said. “There would also have to be some sort of alignment system to line up the free standing body with the truck. If there was something like that, I would buy it.”

At this point common sense would ask: “why bother?” There are hundreds of trailer manufacturers and truck dealers that can furnish a traditional tractor-trailer setup. Why reinvent the wheel?

“We could not go to tractor trailers because of several reasons,” Mr. Thornburg says. “First, the majority of our customers are small retail lumber yards that cannot handle a trailer in their yard. Second, we cannot fill trailer loads of our goods because we just do not sell trailer loads of products. Finally, there is the expense of the equipment and drivers. Any way you looked at it a 24 foot delivery truck was our best option.”

“Before we had the demountable system, I was running fourteen trucks out of our one location in Huntington. Now I have only nine trucks but twelve bodies. We also have another location in Versailles, Kentucky that we opened as we converted to a demountable system. The Versailles location accounts for two of the trucks and three of the bodies. We now serve all of West Virginia, western Maryland, all of eastern Kentucky and southeast Ohio from two locations. I still service all of my accounts, the only difference being I do it with less trucks,” Mr. Thornburg says.

This Multiplication of savings is at the heart of the concept behind demountable truck bodies. A body stands at the loading dock, not an expensive truck with a body, eliminating unnecessary power units. By elimination the truck, the user eradicates licensing fees, maintenance, and tires.

Another component Mr. Thornburg considered when deciding to go to a demountable system was that he would no longer need to go to a costly second shift for loading his trucks. He would no longer have to wait for his trucks to come back from deliveries. He could simply load the freestanding bodies while the trucks were out making deliveries. These two cost saving factors where the major consideration in Mr. Thornburg’s complete fleet conversion.

With demountable equipment currently serving many diverse industries, such as distributors and manufacturers, it is a proven money saver. In fact, the pay back on the equipment is twelve to eighteen months as reported by DCI customers.

“This system is working excellently,” says Ray Wilkes, fleet manager at Chandler Plywood. He explains the daily routine using the demountable bodies. “We start loading bodies at 9:30am. We shuttle empty bodies that have been dropped off in the yard from the previous day to the loading docks.” Chandler Plywood equipped an older truck with a lift system to serve as their yard jockey.

“We typically shuttle anywhere from two to seven bodies a day to the docks for loading,” Mr. Wilkes says. As products are ordered, they are removed from stock and staged at the designated loading docks for routing. Once a full truck route is staged on the dock, it is loaded according to stops.

“As my drivers return they drop off the empty bodies and pick up the loaded ones so they are ready to go wherever that next day’s route will take them. If they have to leave early because of distance there is no problem because the body is already loaded,” he says.

Along with providing Chandler’s immediate needs to expand while cutting costs, the company loads 24’ demountable bodies in Huntington and shuttles them during off peak hours to their other locations.

These pre-routed demountable bodies are now ready for local deliveries. The immense advantage here for Chandler’s Plywood is that using a demountable system eliminates handling the product twice. Instead of off loading trucks from West Virginia into their Kentucky warehouse, and then back into trucks for delivery, they can merely swap the full bodies with empty bodies without handling the product, reducing the chance of damaging products.