Ray VanGunten, president of Diamond Roll-Up Door, demonstrates how a Dover roller shutter works on a service body at the 2018 Work Truck Show in Indianapolis.Photo: Keith Norbury
“The fire emergency industry is almost 80 percent roll-up doors, almost all the new vehicles we produce right now,” said Ray Van Gunten, president of Diamond Roll-Up Door Inc., during an interview at the 2018 Work Truck Show in Indianapolis.
He came to the show to promote how the company’s Dover brand of roller shutters can work just as well on a service body. He had them installed on an aluminum body made by DuraMag, which is based in Waterville, Maine, about 55 miles southwest of Bangor.
So far, Van Gunten has had limited success convincing major service body manufacturers to switch to shutters, although he keeps trying.
“But I think this market is huge for us in the work truck industry,” Van Gunten told Service Truck Magazine. “If things start going that way which they did in the fire and emergency industry, you know, it’ll be a huge market.”
His company manufactures doors for the U.S. market at its plant in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. However, Diamond is part of the AM Group, an Australian company that also manufactures doors in Australia and the U.K.
Other shutter makers
Diamond is one of a few makers of roller shutters for work trucks that exhibited at the Work Truck Show. Others included Hansen International Inc., Whiting Door Manufacturing Corp., and Dynatect Manufacturing Inc.
Dakota Bodies also had a display body on its stand outfitted with Gortite roller shutters by Dynatect.
“The biggest attraction with those is they don’t take up space when you roll them up because they roll up into the compartment,” said Mac Blais, marketing manager for Dakota Bodies.
The company is receiving more and more requests for roll-up shutters, especially on the backs of trucks because they won’t interfere with a liftgate or a trailer.
Not many of those requests are coming from mechanics, however.
“A mechanic would probably go with the hinge doors only because a roll-up door does take up a little bit of room at the top of your body, and the top of your compartment,” Blais said. “A mechanic is going to want drawers all the way up.”
Diamond’s Van Gunten disputed the notion that the shutter doors sacrifice a lot of space.
“We actually made a side pack last year when we put a swing door on the other side and a rollup door on this side,” VanGunten said. “And we looked at the space and it actually takes up the same if not less space for a roll-up door than a swing door.”
Modifications required
A shutter door does, however, require room for a head plate containing the springing mechanism for retracting the door.
“You see the spring is right inside this tube,” Van Gunten said, showing how it works. “So it’s very simple.”
Blais said that the compartments on the body on the Dakota stand needed about five inches of room to accommodate the roller shutters. “But we are a custom body builder manufacturer so we take care of that pretty easily,” Blais said.
Both Blais and Van Gunten agreed that the shutter doors are mechanically reliable despite their moving parts.
“We’ve had good luck with those,” Blais said. “We have sourced a few different manufacturers of them. We feel like we found the right one with Gortite here. But yeah there’s always that possibility if something fails.”
Should a roller shutter break down, it is easier to fix than a hinged door, though, Van Gunten said.
“I can have these parts out to you and change out whatever part’s broken on this door the next day, whereas if you had to get a swing door made from the manufacturer, it’s going to take weeks to get it made,” he said. “That’s a whole other reason the fire industry went to the roll-up doors is the quick maintenance on them.”
— Keith Norbury