Truck and Trailer Tailors Meeting Alaska's specialty hauling needs.

• Author: White, Rindi

Specialty truck and trailer suppliers are not short on ingenuity. In a state where hauling needs are as unique as snowflakes and nearly as abundant, the skill to recognize a problem and engineer a solution is rarely far away.

Need a refrigerated storage facility to preserve a community's whale meat? No problem. Massive snowplow/grader/sanding vehicle? Easy-peasy. Trailer that can handle 70 tons of mining waste and dump it in precisely the right spot, every time? Can do.

Take, for example, Bob's Services. Its "BSI" logo is visible on mud flaps of commercial vehicles all around Alaska. The company predates statehood: it's been in business since 1952, when founder Bob Brown started moving houses for people. Sales manager Kate Forster says it wasn't long before people started coming to Brown to see if he could help them create a custom truck. One conversion at a time, Brown built a reputation on bringing people's truck dreams to life, whether that was adapting pickups to drive on the Alaska Railroad or outfitting trucks with snowplows and sanders for the Alaska Department of Transportation b Public Facilities (DOT&PF) crew to use to keep roads clear.

While Bob's Services is now in its second generation of Brown ownership and operations, the commitment to getting the job done--and done well--remains the same.

Equipment and Relationships Built to Last

"Our list of what we don't do is shorter than the list of what we do," Forster says. "If a customer has an idea, we will bring it to life."

Forster says the company will work with any chassis a customer has and modify it to meet their needs, anywhere in the state. With fortyseven employees working out of the shop in north Anchorage, most of the company's work is a balance of oil field and municipal and state vehicle jobs, with an assortment of "you never know what" in between.

Oil field builds might require a "cold pack," she says, referring to heating pads placed on a truck's oil pan. Some require extra toolboxes and other equipment that is more durable for working remotely in extreme cold.

Snowplows are a significant portion of Bob's Services' work, Forster says. Whether it's a plow sold to a homeowner or local plow truck operator or the gigantic plows and blades the DOT&PF plow trucks use, Bob's Services might be where it came from. The company equips and services most state plow trucks, Forster says. But not all plow trucks are the same--each is tailored to meet the needs of the community it serves.

"If it's going to Yakutat, it's going to be different than if it's going to Anchorage or going to Palmer," she says...