I have an old bread truck, '67 Grumman-Olson on a Ford P350 chassis, that I want to use as a part-time mobile welding and repair truck. I did a search on lift-gates here, but the threads were mostly for different and bigger rigs than this. Who makes a liftgate you like for this sort of light duty application? I'd like to have a trailer hitch, too, and understand that this was do-able with some liftgates (obviously with some restrictions). If this is the wrong forum to ask this, where should I look?
The only lift gate i have ever saw on a truck of this kind was on a Snapon truck. It folded up aginst the back like a tail gate. That truck had a rollup door. Your rig being older may have two smaller back doors? The place i worked at had one on a pickup that was the tail gate. It had a hydraulic cylinder in the bumper that ran a cable going to both sides.The lower it went the futher it got away so a hitch was no problem. It would be easy to build one like this one. What are you useing it for i think a crane would be handyer?
That sounds like a tommygate. I have a tommygate liftgate on an F350 box truck. Fairly light, works OK, have never had a problem with it. It would make no interference at all with a trailer hitch, it's all mounted above the level of a hitch. Approx. 1000 lb cap, but how heavy of a gate can you use on a 1 ton anyway? I don't think there is a gate made light enough to use on a 1 ton that folds underneath like the big ones, this one is a bit of a pain because I have to flip it down every time I open the rear door.
Thanks Doug and Phil. Yeah, my step van has the two rear doors, and it would be a bit of effort to fold down the gate just to get access, but I intend to employ the gate as a work surface part of the time. I agree, 1000lbs is plenty of capacity for this vehicle. I'll look at Tommygate.