Service Vehicle

The spray rig with the tank and booms removed. Ready for the next step.

A month ago, during some winter weather, the staff spent a few days repurposing our old spray rig into a service vehicle for Dan Welborn, our equipment manager.

I've wanted our equipment manager to have a service vehicle for several years but never felt we had a viable option until recently.  A few years ago, we bought a new John Deere spray rig but decided to keep the older Cushman spray rig so we could use it as needed.  Over the past few years, we haven't used it nearly as much as we anticipated and it has sat for over a year collecting dust in our chemical storage room due to costly repairs to the spray module that would be needed.  I decided that it wouldn't make any sense to spend over $3,000 to get it back into condition as a spray rig.  Although the spray module was a mess, the vehicle was still in good mechanical shape.  The staff disassembled the module and we took stock of the condition of the vehicle and decided to proceed with the project.  The picture above shows the vehicle with the spray tank and booms removed.

The most involved part of the project was fabricating the flatbed and attaching it to the frame of the utility vehicle.  As you can see from the pictures to the right, stock steel was purchased and each piece had to be custom made to fit.  The whole process took two days.  Once the flatbed was welded together, it was primed and painted.

The last step was to bolt all the accessories to the flatbed.  The purpose of the vehicle is to allow the equipment manager to quickly react to an issue on the golf course quickly so that equipment downtime is minimal.  Service vehicles will be outfitted differently at each golf course due to different demands.  Each accessory chosen reflects the common problems that Dan will face throughout the season.  A generator to supply power for various hand tools, a compressor for tire work, a tool box full of various hand tools, storage for tire patch kits and other misc. supplies, a vise for various tasks, and a winch mounted under the back for helping machinery when they get stuck.  As you can see from the final picture at the bottom of the post, there is still some space available along the passenger side for additional storage box and some undermount boxes behind the rear wheels.  These will be purchased next year when funding is available.

The staff did a great job taking an old machine that wasn't in use any more and making it useful again.  We are excited to have the vehicle in our fleet and expect it to be very useful throughout the year.

All painted! Ready for tools

Finished product!