Service Truck Magazine “Spec My Truck” June 2026

Service Truck Magazine “Spec My Truck” June 2026

Service Truck Magazine “Spec My Truck” June 2026

Eye-catching but built for real work efficiency

A service truck that works as good as it looks.

by

Spec My Truck

On Canada’s left coast, British Columbia’s Tomas Collier-Pandya went against tradiion in the way he set up his service truck. From his unique “dog house” to the way he organized his tools and equipped his truck to match the way he works.

He started with a four-wheel-drive 2007 Freightliner M2 106 that had been a hydrovac truck. He had a new Summit 14-foot service body installed. Since the hydrovac unit was several feet longer than the new Summit service body, he considered shortening the wheel base, but decided to set the body to the rear of the chassis, with a three-foot gap between the back of the cab and the front of the service body.

“I put my waste oil tank and system in that gap, and it’s worked really well,” he said. “Otherwise, the waste oil systemwould have been taking up room in the bed of the truck. I definitely chose that chassis for the four-wheel drive. I may not use it a lot, but it’s great when I need it. In coastal BC, there’s a bottom to the mud, and the four-wheel-drive is really handy. But up north in the muskeg, there’s no bottom.Four-wheel drive just gets you stuck deeper. I’ve learned that when the front wheels start spinning, just stop and wait for somebody to come pull you out.”

Another nod to mucky working conditions is a 25,000 pound winch built into a custom front bumper Collier-Padya fabricated himself with hand tools.

“I don’t have a sheet metal brake,” he says. “It was just me, a hand grinder and a welder, cutting steel plates and welding them together.

”At the rear of the truck, Collier-Pandya capitalized on an error made when the service body was ordered to add a unique feature to the truck.

“It was supposed to come with a tonneau cover over the center bay,” he recalled, “but it came with an open bed. When I decided to get the custom paint job, I had a fab shop in Prince George build a dog house to sit in the bed. It’s tall enough to stand inside, has a small bench, a heater, my inverter and electrical stuff, and some hooks where I can hang my coveralls on so I can have a dry pair ready. It’s always raining or snowing up here, so it’s nice to have dry clothes.”

The truck’s cab was teal blue when the white Summit body was installed.Collier-Pandya tolerated the color combination for several years while he finalized his design for the truck. Then he gave the truck to a body shop for its striking custom paint job, including the formerly blue Miller Bobcat 250 welder.

“That blue welder was just going to be too glaringly different from the cab and service body,” he said. “I like the way every-thing matches now.”

A nod to the often-remote locations in which he works is a StarLink antenna mounted behind the passenger side of the cab. “It’s almost mandatory up in this country,” he said.The passenger side of the truck is also where he stores all his hand tools.

A nod to the often-remote locations in which he works is a StarLink antenna mounted behind the passenger side of the cab. “It’s almost mandatory up in this country,” he said.

The passenger side of the truck is also where he stores all his hand tools.

“I do some roadside work, so it’s nice to have all my tools in the passenger side compartments,” he added.

“I ordered the body with two American Eagle drawer sets, but decided quickly that they didn’t give me enough storage, so I added two aluminum Brutus drawer sets. They’re both really sturdy, and I was able to custom-order the Brutus drawers so they fit really nicely.”

On the driver’s side of the service body, in the front compartment where many mechanics normally store their hand tools, Collier-Pandya stuffed a huge bolt bin of a size and design normally found in shops. To keep bolts in place during travel, he installed a large panel over the face of the bolt bin, hinged at the top to flip up out of the way.

A VMAC Raptor, a diesel-powered air compressor, supplies air. “Its engine alternator is hooked to the inverter I have in the dog house,” he noted, “and keeps all my batteries charged. That way I don’t have to run my truck’s engine to charge them.”

Collier-Pandya’s path to his carefully designed service truck started as a part-time job after graduating high school.

“I worked part-time changing oil and doing small jobs in a forestry company’s shop when I was in my first year of university, and decided I liked working on things better than being in school.”

He said that he successfully went through the Canadian Interprovincial Standards Red Seal Program apprenticeship to attain his Red Seal certificate, and now works for that company as an independent contractor while serving the needs of his own growing client list.

“I work on a ton of tree care equipment, mulchers, bucket trucks, and chippers. I’ll work on anything,” he summed up. “It’s all interesting, and I like what I do.”