Manufacturers are looking to replace traditional manufacturing materials in favour of environmentally-friendly options to not only reduce their pollution footprint but to also offer their customers the opportunity to do the same. International Truck Body (ITB), a Winnipeg-based custom truck body, trailer and enclosure design and manufacturer, is no exception. ITB approached CIC Engineering to help create an environmentally-friendly composite floor for one of their clients looking to order 200 custom trucks to deliver laundry across the United States.
The floor is 8 ft. wide by 20 ft. long, needed to be extremely durable, but with an environmentally-friendly component and ITB needed a prototype on a tight timeline. Our Fabrication Team took on the project, providing a recommended sandwich panel layup made up of a plywood core sandwiched between fiberglass skins using EcoPoxy, an eco-friendly epoxy resin. We machined the dovetail joints in the plywood on our 5-axis CNC machine and partnered with Eastside for the part layup. EcoPoxy generously provided the resin for the hand-layup and the crushed-glass aggregate for a textured-grip surface.
ITB installed the prototype floor in one of their initial custom laundry trucks for their client and it has been undergoing field testing since June 2016, with a very positive response. ITB has secured an order of 22 pilot trucks with the environmentally-friendly floor and is looking to replace their current fleet of trucks at a rate of 200 trucks per year starting in 2017.
“From conception to project completion, we found dealing with the CIC to be a very easy undertaking. The CIC’s ability to work with International Truck Body to develop and test our current project gave us the ability to produce a composite product that met all of our client’s expectations. Ultimately, the CIC’s involvement in the project resulted in International Truck Body winning one of our largest contracts to date.” – Tim McQueen, General Manager, International Truck Body