Crysteel Truck Equipment Fashions Stellar Reputation Over Its 50 Years
By Eric Olson CEG CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Crysteel Truck Equipment (CTE), a company highly regarded throughout the whole of Minnesota as an expert source for truck equipment, parts and accessories — in addition to keeping a large inventory of snow and ice control equipment — is officially celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024.
In fact, CTE’s roots date back to the 1960s when a mechanically adept south-central Minnesota farmer named Eldon Jones began to customize much of his machinery to work the land to his satisfaction, among them a wagon hoist.
Fast forward to 2024, and it is easy to see how the company’s history has led CTE to its lofty success in the truck equipment marketplace. A series of talented people joined with Jones to build the business and later helped guide it through the next several decades.
CTE officials noted that 2023, for instance, was a “phenomenal” year for the sales and service with “exceptional sales on its books and a large backlog of work.”
Today, Crysteel Truck Equipment enjoys a vast sales and serv-
ice territory that includes upper Iowa and the entire state of Minnesota from the Dakota borders in the west to the Wisconsin border in the east.
“We work with truck dealers and customers with trucks in our area to set them up with the various pieces of equipment that they need,” said Chad Wiens, the current president of CTE. “Our motto is, ‘We Make Your Truck Work for You.’”
Company’s Success Leads to Series of Expansions
In the years after Jones began designing and fabricating custom farm equipment, he ran into difficulty finding companies to build and sell his innovative designs. That led to Jones and his wife, Helen, forming their own company, Lake Crystal Farm Equipment Co., in 1963. Through it, they found a manufacturer to build their Lo-Boy truck hoist, and, by 1968, they were selling the product directly to customers.
A year later, the couple decided to open their own factory, Crysteel Manufacturing, in Arlington, Minn., in October 1969 before relocating it to Lake Crystal shortly thereafter.
Throughout the early 1970s, the business continued to develop
Fridley team members.
as its Lo-Boy hoist was becoming more popular nationally due to its workmanship and innovation. It soon became apparent that a facility expansion was needed at the Lake Crystal site in south-central Minnesota.
More space was required for the installation of hoists and to meet the challenges of working with tag axles and suspensions, as well as farm grain body sales and fitting. That led to what eventually became Crysteel Distributing in 1974, an offshoot of the manufacturing operation, which was created to distribute, install and service the Jones’ line of products, in addition to truck equipment from other vendors.
As a result, the manufacturing side and distributing end became separate entities.
“After Mr. Jones founded Crysteel Manufacturing, he built the ‘Green Building’ where Crysteel Distributing was started on Nov. 1, 1974,” Wiens said. “Years down the road, in 1995, the distributing arm was sold to my father, Glen Wiens, and Larry Brandenburg.
“That was also when the company was renamed Crysteel Truck Equipment, and the Jones family no longer had a stake in Crysteel Distributing,” he added.
Brandenburg joined CTE in early 1975 as an outside salesperson, just two months after Crysteel Distributing opened. He still works as a salesperson four days a week, although he retired as a company vice president 12 years ago.
“Larry has been here since the beginning and is still very much a key asset to CTE,” Wiens noted.
Brandenburg said it was important to recognize that Jones, who passed away in December 2015, “started this successful company. He was a farmer with a better idea who was looking to make life easier.”
CTE Gains Regional Name Recognition
In the early years after CTE had been established, the new business concentrated on selling and installing grain bodies and hoists for farmers and related agri-businesses.
More expansions were needed in the latter half of the 1970s, including the construction of a much-needed paint booth due to custom diamond-style paint jobs becoming an iconic feature of the new Crysteel grain bodies.
Also added was a 40-ft. Bee-Line frame straightening and truck alignment rack to service and repair damaged heavy-duty trucks, one of the few available in the Upper Midwest at the time. It came about as part of CTE’s diversification of products and services, Brandenburg said, and was seen as a must-have to keep
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The Lake Crystal team.
(L-R): The Crysteel ownership group includes Chad Wiens, Kyle Wiens, Larry Brandenburg, Eddy Billman, Daron Fromm, Todd Wiens, Cody Wyatt and Glen Wiens.
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Flatbed Truck Builds
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the company’s growth trending upward.
Following a downturn in the agricultural sector in the early 1980s, CTE took advantage of its presence in Minnesota — and the state’s legendary winters — to diversify its offerings by getting into the municipal dump truck and snow and ice control equipment market.
Brandenburg explained that the company began by selling various snowplow brands and ice control equipment products for light duty trucks. These new equipment lines and service opportunities, in tandem with its existing frame rack repair shop and plenty of hard work and perseverance, successfully brought CTE through the otherwise difficult economy.
CTE’s snow and ice equipment market has only grown in the intervening years, Wiens said, to where it is today a key part of the truck equipment business.
He added that CTE’s line of BOSS snowplow and ice control equipment, which CTE has carried since 1985, is geared for residential, commercial and municipal users. Working with BOSS has allowed both companies to grow together, explained Wiens.
CTE’s sales and service were helped along, too, by BOSS’s multi-position V-plow, Brandenburg said. Eventually, BOSS fulfilled the snow and ice lines to include salt/sand spreaders, sidewalk snow removal machines and liquid de-icing products.
“Snow is very important to us,” he explained.
Nonetheless, Wiens said that CTE discovered long ago that it needed to be prepared months ahead of Minnesota’s traditional start of winter weather by stocking plenty of snow and ice equipment due to the unpredictability of the region’s winters. The last thing CTE wants, he noted, is to be caught short-handed of inventory, a lesson it learned the hard way more than 30 years ago.
“During the Halloween blizzard in 1991,” Wiens recalled, “we received over two feet of snow in one day and every piece of snow and ice-control equipment went out of here really quickly. Since then, we stock snow and ice equipment earlier rather than later. You simply must have the product when the customer needs it.”
Heavy Duty Quad Axle Dump Trucks
This custom fabricated 17-ft. flatbed with a 12-ft. hydraulic ramp was built for a local implement dealer.
This Scott 28-ft. aluminum flatbed has the pull plate package and Buyers Products aluminum toolboxes.
This Future Line aluminum skirted rancher body has built-in toolboxes.
This new Freightliner 114 SD quad axle with a Brandon 19-ft. 6-in. dump body and hoist package features a Sierra Red paint job.
A 2023 Freightliner 114SD with a 19-ft. Brandon FHA dump body and hoist package.
A new Freightliner quad with 19-ft. 6-in. Brandon dump body and hoist package has custom-made swing-out side doors and custom paint.
Twin Cities Shop Helps Spread Truck Equipment Service
With such a multi-faceted business, CTE’s veteran group of employees understand how to correctly orchestrate all of its moving parts in order to meet its customers’ needs.
A prime example was their need to extend the company’s reach in the mid-1980s to better service CTE’s customers across the breadth of Minnesota. Primarily, that meant opening a second location in Fridley, a northern Twin Cities suburb, to bring in more business from the state’s most populous region.
Medium
“When dad and Larry were looking to put a shop in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, they looked on the north side because they realized it was a better location from which to take care of both ends of the Twin Cities, with Lake Crystal serving the southern reaches of the metro area,” Wiens said. “CTE started the Fridley operation with just an office, but after getting the building constructed, its capacity has increased immensely.”
With the drive between CTE’s two facilities being 100 mi., an early drawback to having them that far apart presented itself
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Duty Dump Trucks
Crysteel 9-ft. E-Tipper dump body and hoist package. Paint, pull plates, strobes, poly fenders, front mud flaps, Buyers aluminum toolboxes and a Backpack toolbox complete the upfits.
A new Ram 5500 HD with a Crysteel 11-ft. 6-in. E-Tipper dump body and hoist package. Viper red paint and the Buyers polished stainless steel toolboxes really make this one shine.
A 2024 Ford F600 with Crysteel 9-ft. 6-in. HDX E-Tipper dump body and hoist package has a Buyers aluminum Backpack and Underbody toolboxes, as well as a custom aluminum fuel tank, pull plate package and strobes.
This new Western Star has a Crysteel 14-ft. stainless steel contractor dump body and hoist package.
Medium Duty dump truck — Crysteel Tipper
A new 2025 Ford F650 with a Crysteel 14-ft. contractor body and hoist package.
This new GMC Sierra HD with a Crysteel 11 ft. 6 in. E-Tipper dump body and hoist package, poly side boards, poly fenders, pull plate package, Buyers aluminum toolbox, Whelen strobes and an awesome paint job give this work truck functionality and style.
Medium Duty Plow Trucks & Municipal Trucks
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weekly when the lack of paint facilities in Fridley meant that the CTE truck bodies, which were installed onto their chassis in that location, had to then be hauled safely down to Lake Crystal for painting.
At that time, it was decided to move those trucks that could be transported — along with inventory, which was then stocked in Lake Crystal — back and forth to Fridley via a specialized semitruck and trailer capable of picking up wrecked and disabled trucks along with regular freight.
Adding the Twin City store was just one of a series of expansions and physical changes that CTE instituted over the last 30 years that have transformed how the truck equipment business
operates in its territory.
“It definitely helps to now have a paint and sand-blasting facility in our Fridley store,” Wiens said. “We started with one building on a half-acre there and now we are in three buildings with yard space.”
Although Fridley’s shop space by the late ‘80s included a new 8,000-sq.-ft. pre-cast facility with six bays, a bridge crane and two gantry cranes, along with a parts department, CTE business in the Twin Cities metropolitan area had grown to the point about 15 years ago that the service department needed more room to keep up with its workload.
As a result, Brandenburg said, the company began renting property next door to the Fridley store, which happened to have a
Service Body Truck Builds
A Ford F550 with a Crysteel 9-ft. S-tipper dump body and hoist package. Attached are a Boss 10-ft. DXT V-Plow and a Monroe 8-ft. Jr. Wing.
Medium-duty plow truck
This new Chevrolet 3500 HD was upfit with a Crysteel 9-ft. 6-in. tipper body and hoist package with a Boss 9-ft. 2-in. XT steel V-plow.
A tandem axle municipal plow truck — Crysteel’s version of a ‘Big Mack.’
Medium-duty plow truck with a Boss VBX hopper spreader.
A Fiberline custom enclosed service body on this new GMC is one hot work truck package.
Custom Dakota Bodies aluminum service body with top packs, drawer units, inverter, Tommy Gate aluminum lift gate and more.
A new GMC 3500 HD with Fiberline service body package with accessories.
Unique Custom Builds
paint booth in one of its buildings, and CTE later added a mixing room and a sandblasting booth. By doing so, CTE was finally able to eliminate the need to transport trucks south to Lake Crystal for paint and bodywork.
The Fridley location of CTE is easy to access, he added, as it is just off state Highway 65, north of I-694, which serves as the perimeter freeway around the Twin Cities.
To the south, at the original Lake Crystal store, that site also has grown substantially over the years. In 1997, CTE acquired six more acres there to increase the yard space to a total of 11.5 acres on Minn. Highway 60.
Next door to CTE’s headquarters in Lake Crystal is the former Crysteel Manufacturing, now renamed Truck Bodies & Equipment International (TBEI), which Wiens describes as “one of the world's leading truck body and hoist manufacturers.”
Crysteel Truck Equipment Building Upon Its Success
As CTE’s snowplow and ice control business kept growing in the 2000s, it required more warehouse space to stock its pre-season plow inventory and other products that needed inside storage. That led to the company contracting in 2019 to have a cold storage building constructed upon the Lake Crystal property.
Other CTE changes and additions at Lake Crystal have included:
• A new 14,100 sq.-ft., 25-ft.-tall precast building, erected in 1996 to house the body shop and frame alignment equipment.
• Moving the 40-ft. Bee-Line frame straightening rack and
front-end alignment machine from the primary shop to the new precast concrete building. The pit that was left in the floor after the removal was filled in and a new concrete floor was installed.
• The gain of five truck equipment installation bays in the main shop as a result of the removal of the old paint booth and frame rack.
• A new 70-ft. paint-bake booth was built in the new shop that can become two booths with the closure of an interior door. Each one also was equipped with traveling manlifts.
• A 70-ft. shotblasting booth also was installed in the new shop with a media cleaning and recycling system. This equipment, plus an additional shop and new office space, have proven to be a tremendous enhancement for CTE.
“With all the warehouses and shop space, we have in excess of 40,000 sq. ft. in Lake Crystal,” according to Wiens.
As the company marks its 50th anniversary, he said CTE has more than 90 employees between both stores.
“Every one of our employees is essential because they handle everything we do here. They include equipment installation technicians, painters, parts specialists, repair personnel, shipping and receiving people, truck drivers and folks to do all the clerical duties,” Wiens said.
To be as responsive to its customers’ needs as quickly as possible, he said, CTE also makes certain it maintains an extensive parts inventory in both the Lake Crystal and Fridley stores.
As a result of its specialized truck equipment business, CTE’s technicians need to be skilled at several jobs, including as welders,
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Custom sign truck with crane and hydraulic catwalk.
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Polaris Ranger with Boss UTV V-plow Boss SS XT V-plow on a John Deere tractor. Heavy-duty service truck with crane.
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mechanics, electricians and hydraulic specialists.
“That means it takes a long time to train people to work here and learn how to properly install equipment on these trucks,” Wiens said. “There are no schools to go to for Truck Equipment 101; it is really an on-the-job training program.”
Minnesota State Fair Is Annual CTE Showcase
One of the things that CTE has long participated in to boost its market exposure is maintain a large presence at the annual Minnesota State Fair, which Brandenburg described as being the second-largest in the United States, after the Texas fair.
“The Minnesota event has been very good for us over the years,” he said. “Our display at the fair takes up an entire block where we feature up to 40 trucks on our lot. We also have an indoor showroom where we display hitches, toolboxes, clothing and LED lights, among other things.
“The fair is essentially CTE’s third office for two weeks each August because a lot of people come through our exhibit.”
Crysteel Truck Equipment’s headquarters in Lake Crystal is located at 52248 Ember Rd. off Minnesota Highway 60. The office phone number is 800/722-0588. On the north side of Minneapolis, the Fridley store is at 1130 73rd Ave. N.E., a halfblock east of Minn. 65. Its phone number is 800/795-1280.
For more information, visit crysteeltruck.com. CEG from page 9
Fridley store construction — 1989
Bee-Line paint and body shop construction — 1997
Crysteel celebrated its 25th anniversary party at the Mankato Civic Center in 1999.
Glen Wiens (L), owner, and Larry Brandenburg (R), owner, congratulate a prize winner.
Crysteel celebrated its 25th anniversary party at the Mankato Civic Center in 1999.
Hauling equipment between stores
BOSS Row
2009 Freighliner M2 112 with Stellar Hooklift/Flatbed Package. 58K GVW, 112,559 Miles, Cat C13, 350 HP, Allison RDS Auto, 32K Hooklift w/61” Hook Height, Stk#999-02851 $67,500
2020 Ford F350 SD XL 4x4 with Crysteel 11’ E-Tipper Dump Body. 14K GVW, 114,767 Miles, 6.2L V8 Gas, 10 Spd Auto, Stk# 999-10010C $57,750
2009 Ford F550 XL Super Duty 4x4 with New 12’ HD Aluminum Landscaper Body. New Power Stroks V8 Diesel Engine w/Warranty, 17,950 GVW, 256,233 Miles, Stk# 999-02840 $44,950
2016 Freightliner M2 106 with New Crysteel 16’ Contractor Body Package. 33K GVW, 117,247 Miles, Cummins 220 HP, Allison 2500 RDS Auto, Stk# 999-02868 $78,850
2008 GMC 5500 with 12’ Aluminum Chipper/Dump Body. 20K GVW, 143,010 Miles, 8100 Vortek Gas, Auto, Stk# 999-02997C $44,950
2013 Isuzu NPR HD with 14’ Lawn Equipment Body. 14,500 lb GVW, 182,865 miles, 210 HP Isuzu Diesel, Automatic, Stk# 999-02897C $24,950
2021 Chevrolet 5500HD Silverado 4x4 with Crysteel 11’ Dump Body & Hoist. Duramax Diesel, Allison Auto, HD Hitch, Only 18,645 Miles, Like New!! Stk# 999-10012C $69,950
2007 GMC 5500 with New 12’ Aluminum Dump Body & Hoist Package. 20K GVW, 164,942 Miles, 8.1 V8 Gas Engine, Allison Auto, AC, Good Michelin Tires, Stk#999-02876C $41,950
2015 Ford E30 Commercial Cutaway Chassis with a Knapheide KUB Cab High Enclosed Service Body. 124,125 Miles, 5.4L Triton V10 Gas, Auto, AC, PW/PL, Stk# 999-02946C $29,850