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The 2024 WFB Truck & Van contest winners brought "it" this past year: creativity, innovation, market strategies, and good humor, too. There's solid drive, gut determination, and even some muscle this season. Our standout purveyors of fine hardwood flooring showcase their vehicles to success, both literally and figuratively in our four categories: Best Exterior Graphics, Most Organized Interior, Most Unusual Vehicle and Biggest Disaster. The checkered flag's been waved, and the results are in. Some applause, please, as our pros take their victory lap.
Best Exterior Graphics
Mack Custom Wood Floors LLC
Franklin, Tenn.
Jason Mack smiled and laughed when asked about his Best Exterior win: "Greatest day of your life, right?!" He admits that taking home the top prize for his newly designed and wrapped Mack Custom Wood Floors Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van was, while perhaps not the greatest day, exciting nevertheless.
"My last van I had was sort of an old-school E350 Ford that I had wrapped a couple years back, and I basically outgrew that thing. So looking for something new, I thought, 'What's bigger than a Sprinter?'" Mack explains.
"Guys are always on the fence about whether to wrap or not," he adds, but his first wrap "got me a fair amount of jobs by folks seeing the wrap. It's basically a moving billboard, so the plan was to update the logo and design graphics for the larger Sprinter."
Mack envisioned the new van cruising down the road and sitting in parking lots and client driveways. So when he considered designs for the new wrap/billboard, he had one main goal: "This thing needs to stand out, and it needs to POP and catch attention."
Mission accomplished: With the aid of a skillful graphic designer, the wrap's design was created, and also became the company's logo. It features a beautiful, majestic oakleaf canopy lofted above a brawny trunk and limbs, gently melding downward; the bark transforms into floor planks covering the earth below.
Mack Custom Wood Floors gets business from the van just rolling down the road, but people also stop if only to comment on the quality of the design.
Beyond the artistry, Mack had three key goals for the wrap: "No. 1, the name. I didn't want to stack a list of a bunch of services we offer and make the approach confusing. Make it simple. Catch the eye. See the name, have it stick in their mind. Under that is the website. Services are on the back doors, but the bulk of that van is the name, the design, a website, and phone number."
Now the 2021 Sprinter draws attention, hauls in website traffic and generates phone calls—and can carry a pallet of flooring and the sand and finish equipment.
It's part of Mack Custom Wood Floors' cohesive branding that now features the logo on its business cards, letterhead, and all sorts of company swag. Mack says it's part of communicating to customers that their work will be just as sharp: "People know what they're gonna get," he says.
Most Unusual Work Vehicle
Mountain Impressions Hardwood Flooring
Glenwood Springs, Colo.
The stunning Rocky Mountains aren't the only attention-getter in the mountain town of Glenwood Springs, Colo.—there's also this 1956 Chevy flatbed from Mountain Impressions Hardwood Flooring. What was originally a factory flatbed truck now gets so much attention that locals shout "The Joe Show!" wherever it goes.
Joe is Joe Lott, the owner of Mountain Impressions, and his beloved truck that won this year's "Most Unusual" category is a 2-ton mounted on a '93 chassis. Originally a two-wheel drive, Lott added a 4-wheel front end. Topped off with a "stoked out" 454 Chevy V8 Big Block engine, and it's now good for more than 550 hp.
The impressive hulk of a machine was stripped of its full-size '93 Chevy Silverado four-door crew-cab and cargo space and transformed into Lott's own design, which offers a larger bed and convenient side truck boxes. Lott demoed the rotted bed and replaced it with 11/2-inch thick, 51/2-inch-wide reclaimed timber from Olde Wood Ltd.
"That truck was always just sitting in a field, and I always wanted it from this old guy, and the old guy's like, 'It's not for sale, it's not for sale,'" Lott says. "Then finally one day he's like, 'Hey, you want that truck?' And I said, 'Yeah, man, I'll be right over.'"
The truck hadn't started in about 30 years, but they put some gas in the carb; put a battery in it; aired up the dry, rotted tires—and it fired right up. It idled more than 20 minutes when Lott says he realized, "Crap, I'm gonna drive it home."
The truck had no brakes. "All I had was the tranny brake, you know?" Lott says. "So every stoplight I came to, I was only doing about 20 mph, but I had to pull the lever back and lock it up, and it was kind of like 'WRWRW' as the tires would lock up. I got it home and said, 'Cut it up! We're gonna make a truck out of it!'"
The beast is now the Mountain Impressions wood hauler— it carries two pallets of flooring or 8,000 pounds easily—and also goes to car shows. (Burnouts are also mandatory with any Joe Lott machine, he says.)
Lott also has two box trucks with wraps and Transit vans in his work fleet, along with a '69 Road Runner and a '69 Torino in his personal collection, but it's this wood flooring Red Rocket that has garnered over a dozen auto show awards—and now our "Most Unusual" 2024 prize.
Most Organized Interior
Natural Choice Wood Floors LLC
Olmsted Falls, Ohio
Alex Oster's shop was broken into late November 2023, and the company van and all the tools were stolen. The police recovered a good amount, but the van had not fared well: "Eventually it was recovered, but it was completely trashed, and tools were missing or damaged," Oster says. "I took the opportunity to set this van up exactly the way I've always wanted."
The situation brought about mixed emotions, Oster says, but he decided to make the most of it. "It was an opportunity I decided to seize on … a brand-new van with a clean slate to do exactly what I wanted," he says. Over the years, he had made his own van shelving, drawer slides and more, but it was never perfect, and he had been following the Bott Smartvan system for years. "It seemed the perfect time to go for it," he says.
Bott Smartvan offers self-install van shelving options designed to attach to existing factory holes in the van. Everything in Oster's new Ram Promaster 3500 van is part of the system. "They help with everything. They mock up a design and send you a schematic ahead of time," Oster explains.
The system offers a long list of cool features, including that it seamlessly integrates Festool Systainers on guide rails specifically designed for them. The system also offers completely customizable and interchangeable shelves and drawers, as well as straps that can be locked in anywhere to the walls to cinch in things like vacuums securely. Oster uses the moveable hooks for hanging power cords.
Oster says that when he's built van storage on his own, he always seemed to end up losing a great deal of van space. "This storage system will get you closer to the vehicle walls, making better use of space," he says, adding that this large van is the "workhorse," so it was important that the design allowed for maximum tool and supply storage but also had a large middle space in the cargo area, which is important for wood flooring deliveries and more.
The van sports a lightweight but protective fiberglass wall that securely fits the cab area behind the driver and passenger seats but also allows easy access to the back of the van through a center opening.
Although no one wants to experience something like a van theft, Oster definitely turned the situation into a positive: "It's the cleanest van we've ever been able to work out of," he says, "So it's been really nice and helps us stay efficient."
Watch a video tour of Alex Oster's van here:
Biggest Disaster
Grillworks Inc.
Marshall, Minn.
and
Heartland Wood Products
Redwood Falls, Minn.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder … Behold the 2024 WFB Truck & Van Biggest Disaster. What a beauty?!
"That's a nice way of putting it," laughs Jason Rasmussen of Grillworks, Inc. When he and his colleagues laughed at last year's winner in this category, co-worker Dan Vogt joked that they should submit photos of the truck they share with sister company Heartland Wood Products, which makes moldings and custom millwork for Grillworks.
This circa 2000–2002 (no one really knows) Ford F250 was bought from a concrete contractor in 2008 with 200,000 miles already on it. Vogt and Rasmussen guesstimate they have put on another 75,000 since.
There is nothing pretty about this year's award-winner, known as "The Red Chariot," along with lots of other names we can't publish. "It's been prone to breakdowns— obviously, by the looks," says Rasmussen.
"It was Heartland's vehicle, and the muffler fell off, so we gave them ours and we were gonna use this one for just running around, but it's in bad shape," Vogt adds. It's still used, however, to deliver panels and board stock to make their wood floor vents, treads, risers and moldings from Heartland, in Redwood Falls, Minn., 36 miles to Grillworks' facility in Marshall, Minn. Rasmussen says he's driven it the most, using it to make local deliveries, the occasional long run between the two companies, and plowing snow.
Adding to the compelling case of why it ranks as a winner for "Biggest Disaster," the company's maintenance guy refuses to drive it.
There is no state inspection, and if there were, Rasmussen says, "It would never pass! It's seen it's better days … The inside is almost shot. It's rusted real bad … the muffler fell off, so it's louder than heck, and it doesn't go real well in reverse anymore."
Sounds like a winner to me!
