The photo below shows our truck when it was new. We treated the floor with a products called Crack Filler and Floor Restore and loaded our equipment. (Details
here and
here)
The crack filler filled the cracks and screw holes to keep the dirt from accumulating in those recesses and make for easier sweeping. I chose Floor Restore because it was advertised a one-time application.
The products did not go on easy. Prepping the floor and applying the products was an all day job and the products are expensive. But we got our money's worth. I have never used a truck floor that was so easy to clean. More importantly, our customers repeatedly raved about the floor, which we believed reflected well on our professionalism.
To protect the floor and the truck, we generally do not permit fork lifts in our CR-unit. That can be done with a CR-unit that typically hauls small loads. With most loads, we have the fork lift driver place the load on the dock and we take it from there with our pallet jack.
In a D or DR unit, the product would hold up under the fork lift wheels but not under the abuse imposed by reckless fork lift drivers. When one of them decides to push or drag a 4,000 lbs skid or container across your wood floor, a groove will be carved.
Four years after applying the products, the inside of the truck does not look like new. The nice white walls have been marred and scarred by freight that is secured to them. The shiny-new load bars are similarly marred and scarred. And that beautiful floor? It too has taken a beating and does not look as good as it once did.
We still get customer raves about the floor but not as often as before. It is a working truck and no matter how hard one tries, damage happens when you regularly put tons of freight on a wood floor. That is true for C and CR-units and even more true for D and DR-units.
The product has held up and the truck remains easy to sweep but my interest in keeping it shiny and new has not persisted. I used to get down on my hands and knees with spray bottles and rags to restore the floor to pristine condition after every load. I do that no more and the floor shows it. These days, when I find spare time on my hands, it is invested in
other interests.
While it provides a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction and professional pride to have a floor like this, I cannot identify a single penny of additional income that came from having a shinny truck floor that customers said was cleaner than the floors in their kitchens. Having found a more lucrative use of the time I used to spend cleaning our truck floor, my time is invested there.
I used to enjoy the time I spent on the truck floor. It was an ongoing project that produced visible results and high praise from our carrier and customers. Now when I go to work on it, it is to keep it clean but not pristine. If I spend too much time in the back of the truck, my mind drifts to other goals and the satisfaction I used to experience while maintaining our truck floor rapidly fades.
