At M&R Specialty Trailers and Trucks we’ve had the previlage of being able to build so many custom vehicles during our 15+ years in business. Here is another example of a truly unique build we had the opportunity to build a customer based in France. In the video is a vintage H Van truck, originally manufactured in France and shipped to us in Florida to complete the custom manufacturing and conversion to a concession vehicle.

This video featuring Bob Pierson, co-owner of M&R, is being shot in a slightly different format than one’s we’ve previously produced for you on the website. Typically, we’ve shown you only the finished builds, after all the cooking equipment is installed and everything is ready to present to the customer. To help you understand the build process better, we thought it would be helpful to complete a video where we show you what the food truck looked like when it arrived in our manufacturing facility and take you along for it’s transformation. We hope you enjoy this new format and find it to be both entertaining and educational!

The Build Process

Stage 1
As Pierson describes at the top of video, what you see initially is how this H Van was delivered from the customer. Although unique to the United States, this truck is made in a style that’s extremely common across France and Europe. The first 2 minutes 50 seconds of the video Pierson shows you around the outside of the truck then opens up the rear door and shows you around the inside of the cab. As you’ll see in the video it’s a very narrow vehicle, but is tall as well.
Stage 2
In stage two of the process, we’ve already made some significant customizations to the H Van. At this point, we’ve started to build the foundational layout of the vehicle. The framing within the inside of the cab has been completed. The serving window has also been cut out of the right side of the cab. Note the attention to detail in the development of the serving window from Pierson during this segment of the video. There is also a new wall being built and where all of the cooking equipment including the water heater and propane cabinet is described by Pierson. As you’ll see in the video, attention to detail in this stage of the build out is critical to ensuring the customer has a vehicle they’ll be comfortable and happy to work in.
Stage 3 – The finished Product. 
Approximately 6 minutes and 20 seconds into the video, you see the final product that will be shipped out to the customer. Within the driver’s cab we made some subtle adjustments, including adding some seat belts and improving the atheistic. You’ll also see the white wall that was built between the driver’s seat and the kitchen.
With this build it was also critical that we got the correct hue of green paint so that it would match this existing exterior paint and maintain that retro feel across the vehicle. At this point you’ll also see the total transformation of the H Van when the serving window is lifted up for the first time and you can see the inside of the kitchen area.
This is where we had to get a little bit creative. Due to the size of the vehicle, we simply weren’t able to get a generator installed within the vehicle and include all the other cooking equipment the customer needed to operate the truck. This is where the creativity of our design specialists really comes into play. As a solution, we built a custom trailer and matched the look and feel up to the truck. Then we put a custom roof and door on the generator trailer so that it could be easily accessed. This little touch adds a lot of wow factor to the vehicle that you can see at 7 minutes and 15 seconds within the recording above.
We hope you enjoyed this new format we are testing to demonstrate our vehicles! If you have any questions about a custom build for your special situation, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 904-397-0246 and remember if you can dream it, we can build it!