At a Time When Standards Seem to be Declining Everywhere, 

Maintaining Yours will Set You Apart from the Crowd

When a new work truck is delivered to the customer, we sometimes think the transaction is complete. But only if we do it wrong. A work truck is not a consumable item like pizza, or something that sits secluded in the corner of a garage like a hot water heater. A work truck is a mobile, interactive billboard that demonstrates your company’s commitment to quality every single day it stays on the road. It comes with an owner-driver who will often readily volunteer the pros and cons of his decision to purchase that cab+body combination, and how it helps him perform his work at each and every work site each and every day.

For the sales and support staff at Scelzi Enterprises – whose truck bodies often outlive the chassis cab they were initially mounted upon –  these are usually very positive conversations. Take the recent request they received from the customer who wanted to replace the weathered Scelzi nameplate on his 1993 Scelzi flatbed. “We bought the body for our fence-building company,” states Lance Leavitt, previously with the Melco Fence Co, “and it has been the best truck body we ever owned. We had just landed a big contract with a large water district in the California Central Valley, but none of our existing trucks were small enough to maneuver well in their tight flood control spaces, while still rugged enough to handle heavy loads of chain link steel fencing. So we contacted Scelzi to build us a custom 9-foot flatbed, and boy, did they deliver!”

More than 31 years later, the truck body is still a work horse. It has a new home near Tacoma and a new job now, but it still looks ready for anything. “It is ready for another 30 years of work,” Leavitt adds with a smile, “but that nameplate must have scraped up against a few too many embankments, and it bothers me how it looks on an otherwise great-looking body. So I asked the people at Scelzi if they could make a duplicate with all the original information included  – and they were kind enough to do so. What we love most is the one-piece rolled edges. This bed has withstood forklift sideloads for 30 years and shows no signs of damage”. 

The new nameplate arrived several days later, and Leavitt is looking forward to switching out the crusty original with the shiny new replacement. But first he is planning to repaint the original bed and make a few more cosmetic changes, “Just to make the whole thing shiny again,” he says. “There are so few things you can buy today that seem to last as long as they used to, it’s just really nice to own something that does.”

These are comments Scelzi owner Mike Scelzi has been hearing for over four decades, but he never tires of hearing them one more time. “We know there are accountants out there somewhere telling their truck body designers not to use so much steel, or to use cheaper materials, or to weld a faster way – but none of those people will ever work for me,” states Scelzi. “I love driving down the freeway or a country road and seeing one of our truck bodies at a job site or being driven to one. I can’t help but grin a little. And I have to admit, the older the Scelzi truck body, the bigger my smile.”

Standards that don’t get compromised. 

It’s still the standard for Scelzi Truck Bodies. 

Scelzi Enterprises