How important are Knapheide Mfg. utility truck bodies to the success of family-owned Brinkman Plumbing Contractors, a 32-year-old business based in Quincy, Illinois?
Critical enough that owner Jim Brinkman still vividly remembers the day he took delivery of his first new one in 1992. He already owned two used Knapheide bodies at the time and couldn’t wait until he’d saved enough money to buy a new one.
“I thought I was in high cotton when I got it,” says Brinkman, who established the company in 1991. “In fact, I still have pictures of that truck. It was a pretty big deal.”
Since then, Brinkman estimates he’s purchased 50 Knapheide bodies, mostly utility models with an enclosed storage area (roughly 4 feet wide and 11 feet long) in between two banks of cabinets accessible from the exterior. He grew to admire Knapheide products while working for a plumbing company before he formed his own, and Knapheide’s production facility — located in northern Illinois — was one of the company’s clients, he says.
Brinkman Plumbing employs 32 people, including 27 plumbing technicians, and does industrial, commercial and residential plumbing. The company serves customers within about a 60-mile radius around Quincy (located on the Mississippi River in west-central Illinois), which includes parts of Missouri and Iowa.
The company runs about 28 trucks, a combination of Ford F-350s and GMC 2500s. Almost all of them are configured identically.
Knapheide bodies typically last about 20 years, and Brinkman tries to buy a new one every year to replace the oldest one in the fleet.
PRODUCTIVITY AND BRANDING
Why stick with Knapheide for more than two decades? Two key reasons: Productivity and branding, Brinkman says.
The steel and aluminum truck bodies are warehouses on wheels. They deliver a productivity boost by carrying roughly $10,000 worth of parts and tools. Some of the exterior cabinets hold tools while others are equipped with drawers, shelves and bins.
“We buy the Knapheide bodies to achieve optimal efficiency,” Brinkman says. “Just having all the materials in the right place and knowing where everything is, as opposed to tools and parts just scattered about, is huge from an efficiency standpoint.
“In the morning, all our technicians go to a staging area and load up their materials for the day,” he continues. “Then they head out to their job sites, where they stay for eight hours because they have everything they need on those trucks.
“I don’t want them going to parts warehouses,” Brinkman adds. “I want them leaving here all loaded up and ready to work.”
Furthermore, the bodies are pretty much identical, which helps keep operations moving efficiently if a technician unexpectedly has to drive a truck other than his own, he notes.
PROTECTION AND SECURITY
Furthermore the weathertight canopy and cabinets protect tools and materials from damage incurred by the weather. Plus the cabinet doors and rear barn doors can be locked with padlocks, which prevents costly thefts, Brinkman points out.
“Plus nothing can blow out of the rear of the truck and hit another vehicle,” he adds.
Inside the center storage area, LED lights keep things highly visible.
“When those lights are on, it’s really bright in there,” Brinkman says. “It’s 100% better than a dimly lit cargo van.”
Furthermore, a 5-foot-high ceiling allows technicians to move around much more easily than if they were inside a cargo van, Brinkman notes.
“You just have to bend your head down a little and you can walk around pretty easily,” he says.
Some customized features also increase productivity and efficiency. In particular, the trucks include roughly 8-inch-wide walkways on each side of the truck, above the cabinets. For added safety, they’re covered with chrome tread plates, as are the steps that provide access to the top of the truck, where pipe racks hold materials, Brinkman says.
BUILDING BRAND RECOGNITION
The Knapheide bodies also boost brand recognition. The trucks and bodies are painted green and the cabinets’ flat-panel doors provide plenty of space for the distinctive Brinkman Plumbing logo and lettering.
“After all these years, people definitely know us by our green trucks and those utility bodies,” Brinkman says.
The utility bodies cost around $28,000 each. Add in a truck chassis and tools and the cost tops out at about $70,000, he says.
“But if you break down the cost of the utility bodies over 20 years, it comes out to around $1,400 a year,” Brinkman points out. “We save way more than that a year just in materials not getting damaged by weather, stolen or blowing out of trucks, not to mention how they help increase productivity and efficiency.
“I wouldn’t want to run our business without them,” he continues. “It would make life more difficult and we wouldn’t be as profitable. Speed and efficiency are the name of the game and that’s exactly what we get with these utility bodies.”
