New F550 chipper truck

[coolbrze]

So I scrapped the idea of an F650 due to price & logistics of getting one here (5K shipping costs) & am thinking of just adding a new Ford F550 to the fleet. I want a truck w/ a 14' bed but I'm not big on some of the chipper boxes I've seen. Are there some good manufacturers that fabricate chipper tops (the truck will already have a 14' solid side dump bed)? I know of SouthCo, but not sure if they do the entire bed or can do the top... I like the top to stop ~3/4 of the length of the bed so we can load aggregates w/ the doors closed & when using a crane to load long logs/trunks, not having a chipper top running the full length of the bed is an advantage...

 

[Griff93]

We have an F550 with a 12 ft bed on it. It works really well as a chipper truck. I like it a lot better than the big GMC ex asplundh chipper truck we had at one point. Ours was a flat bed dump that has been added onto. We needed to push it into service quickly when we got it and didn't have the time or funds to make the add on out of metal. This winter it will get steel bed sides 40" high and an aluminum cap to go on above that. The materials are already sitting at the shop, just haven't had a chance to take care of it due to working with the truck. It has no problem towing a 12" chipper behind it with a full load.

 

[fatheadon1]

My set up is an 09 f550 with a 12' landscape dump and an aluminum chipped up that I've built. The truck holds 18-19 yards of chips but scales well above what's it's legal load of 19500 it scales fully loaded around 24000 lbs and the empty truck is 11800

 

[coolbrze]

Yep, we have an '06 F450 w/ 14' solid side landscape dump & we built a 10' chipper box on that. Ours weighs 12,500 w/ a guy driving & 1/2 tank of diesel. Overloaded most every day it's pulling our 250XP & a load of chips/logs.

I'm looking for a new truck & want to know of any good metal chipper top/cap manufacturers that y'all would recommend instead of building our own again...

 

[Greenstar]

Call up the manufacturer of your dump body. They should be able to provide one, especially because they probably have all the accurate specs of your box. A few years ago I called up Dejana to ask them for one for an old Dejana body I had, and they wanted about $1600.
Most manufacturers of dump bodies should either have or be able to make for you however.
Good luck.

Did you ever end up getting it done, or what?