Food Truck Construction Planning Details
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Beyond restaurant equipment layout, there are many things to consider when designing a food truck.
Figure we are starting with a standard P30 Grumman Olson stepvan. (Your standard DHL/Fed Ex truck.) Right behind the curbside-only-functioning-door lies a false wall on the inside for the door to slide into.
Some Trucks use this space for marketing graphics like: Follow @thecravetruck on Twitter. Others use this space for menu space: The menu could be a chalkboard for daily menus. Some use a framed window box for a permanent menu. One truck uses this space to mount a flat screen tv to entertain customers waiting to order. Imaginative, but due to weather and theft, this means the TV must be mounted and dismounted between serving locations. We like the menu space best.
Our next consideration is the serving window. Open window or sliding glass/window screens? Since we plan to roll summer through winter, we gravitate towards regular windows to control extreme weather conditions and deter flies from our mobile kitchen.
Finally, our work must address the height of the serving window. Instead of purchasing a vehicle that had 16" tires, our standard step van has 19.5" tires. This standard step van height means that the truck sits a little too high for comfortable serving height. In order to lower the body of the truck closer to the ground, we will need to jack the truck up and remove a few leaf springs from the suspension and also move the springs from the top of the axle to the bottom of the axle.
After gutting the interior, pulling all the electrical, and fine tuning the mechanics of the truck, our planning is ready to be put into action. The greatest hurdle comes in finding an indoor work space that will fit the height and length of the step van so we can continue work in the middle of winter.
Our next consideration is the serving window. Open window or sliding glass/window screens? Since we plan to roll summer through winter, we gravitate towards regular windows to control extreme weather conditions and deter flies from our mobile kitchen. 
Finally, our work must address the height of the serving window. Instead of purchasing a vehicle that had 16" tires, our standard step van has 19.5" tires. This standard step van height means that the truck sits a little too high for comfortable serving height. In order to lower the body of the truck closer to the ground, we will need to jack the truck up and remove a few leaf springs from the suspension and also move the springs from the top of the axle to the bottom of the axle.
After gutting the interior, pulling all the electrical, and fine tuning the mechanics of the truck, our planning is ready to be put into action. The greatest hurdle comes in finding an indoor work space that will fit the height and length of the step van so we can continue work in the middle of winter.
