A Leader in Service

a heating system guarantees warmth. The truck has a triple heat source system: Heat is pumped from the truck engine, off an electrical outlet when the truck is parked overnight, or from a diesel-fueled heater in the field.

An AC converter is integrated into the system as well so a lightbank can be operated for early-morning and nighttime service work. The truck carries eight fresh oil tanks, a salvage (used) oil tank, a grease tub, and a water tank for radiator work/repair.

When Max Bowman started his company 45 years ago, truck bodies weren’t anywhere close to the top of his product line. In fact, they weren’t even on the list. That changed in 1976 and service trucks sales are now a growing part of Star Equipment’s business.

Star partners with Iowa Mold Tooling (IMT), a Garner, Iowa, fabricator of service vehicles. IMT’s mechanical, lube, and knuckleboom crane trucks are sold around the world. Star’s slice of the IMT business includes Altorfer Inc., an ag and construction equipment dealer with 22 locations in Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois.

Altorfer is a Caterpillar dealer and teamed up with Star and IMT to produce a large and rather unique lube service vehicle. Part of its uniqueness is its size: The truck cab and body stretch 32 ft., bumper to bumper, and ride on tandem rear axles. IMT’s usual lube truck body configurations are smaller—13-ft. and 17-ft.

Another unique element: The service truck body rides on a Caterpillar chassis, the new Cat 660 vocational truck chassis.

“There are not too many of those around, yet,” said Howard Schiffer, Altorfer’s general service manager. Caterpillar has moved seriously into the truck business with its big-grilled 660 powered by Cat CT series engines linked to automatic transmissions.

When Star sells an IMT-bodied service vehicle, the buyer has the choice of choosing a chassis or letting Star crane and service truck salesman Jerry Jaksich solicit one. Schiffer wanted the new service truck to ride on a Cat chassis.

“Cat has always made engines and transmissions, “Jaksich said, “but now they’re putting them under their own hood and going down the road. They’re really putting the chassis out in the forefront as a viable player in the industry.”

The Altorfer service truck body is ground-breaking in other ways, too. The body is enclosed to keep the oil and lube products warm in the winter months, which is not that unusual, except that

Altorfer has a fleet of about 60 service trucks operating in its threestate service area, according to Schiffer, with many of them IMT-bodied trucks bought from Star. When it came time to replace some aging lube trucks, the IMT-Star team came together to help Altorfer design a new one. Four of the new trucks have been delivered and more are likely to follow.

Jaksich’s sales for Star Equipment are three types: commercial service trucks, knuckleboom crane trucks, and long-boom crane trucks. Besides sourcing the bodies, Star also installs additional equipment to meet a customer’s requirements and upfits new equipment to trucks already operating in a fleet. The trucks range in size from 13,000 to 50,000 lbs., gross volume weight.

Jaksich believes the truck service part of Star will continue to grow because the size and complexity of so many pieces of heavy equipment manufactured today make field service an essential part of a contractor’s operation.

“The new machinery requires more trained technicians and it is harder all the time for companies to find those kinds of technicians, so the companies are relying more on dealers for the technical support,” he said. “The dealers are stepping up to the plate. Moving the big machines to the shop is difficult, so the dealers are taking the shop to the machines.

“They have really upped the game at Altorfer with this new service truck,” he added. Altorfer did it, that is, with the help of IMT and Star Equipment.

The company provides both chassis and body upfit for vehicles that operators can drive to the field for high-end service. These include mechanical and lube service trucks as well as material handling and excavation trucks with telescopic booms and mounted National Crane units.