Published May 2002

Northend Truck
customizes work vehicles

By John Wolcott
Herald Business Journal Editor

The rows of Ford trucks waiting at Bickford Motors in Snohomish look half-finished without anything on the bed-frames behind the cabs, but not for long.

Bickford is one of Snohomish County’s top customers for Northend Truck Equipment Co. in Marysville, a custom fabricator of specially built truck bodies, including flatbeds, dump trucks, cranes and hoist platforms.

For 20 years the company has been equipping work vehicles with practical, efficient add-on bodies that are tailored to a variety of professional and industrial needs with scores of applications.

“We put anything on the back end of any kind of truck,” said General Manager Scott Boxman, “from service bodies to swivel-cranes, hoists and lift-gates, or snow plows for the front. We do a lot of custom fabrication for dealerships, particularly Bickford, and for cities, counties and contractors for their dump trucks. We manufacture dump bodies for trucks from three-quarter tons up to tandem-axle Kenworths and Peterbilts, anything from 2 to 3 yards to 10- to 12-yard sizes for the big rigs.”

Boxman said his company’s large shop, at Smokey Point Boulevard and 152nd Street NE north of Marysville — near the north-end office for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department — is equipped with two overhead bridge cranes for placing truck bodies.

“Every job is just a little different, so we custom fabricate what they need to fit their individual applications. That way they get more value out of their work vehicles, compared to just putting on a plain flat bed from somebody who manufactures it back east. Also, our units are built of structural steel, which is higher quality and heavier duty than pre-formed units,” Boxman said. “We don’t usually start our work until the vehicle is here so we can size the headboard to the chassis. They’re all a bit different.”

Northend Truck serves clients from Bellingham to Tacoma in Western Washington, Boxman said, and sometimes even travels to Eastern Washington. For more information, contact Boxman at 360-653-6066 or 800-653-6066 or visit the company’s Web site, www.northendtruck.com.

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