How-to: Custom walk-in storage at the front of a dry van; bulk tank niche explored

If regular listeners don’t recognize the first voice you hear in this week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, that of Harrison, Ark.-based owner-op Daniel Snow, he and his wife and business partner Phyllis’ rig you’re certain to remember.

Christened “The Goose,” it’s a 1996 Freightliner Classic with 140 inches’ worth of a custom-redesigned ICT sleeper the Snows located and outfitted themselves for the comforts of home on the road about 7 years ago. You’ll recall past posts on the blog here and here that detailed the truck and some of the Snows’ history in business.

Another project undertaken around the time they were putting the 140-inch custom sleeper together is a four-foot walk-in storage compartment they built into the front of their dry-van trailer, accessible from the tractor’s deck catwalk via a door assembly, to house tools and other supplies.

From the first time we saw it last year, it certainly seemed like a modification with scads of potential for emulation by any single-trailer owner out there with mechanical expertise and, like the Snows, plenty of time spent on the road away from the comfort of home and established relationships with diesel shops you know well.

The compartment repurposes existing trailer space for a new use. In the 7 years it’s been there, as Daniel says in the podcast, they’ve lost out on a load because of it just a few times.

Later in the podcast, too, a couple conversations with liquid-bulk tank owner-ops Mike Landis and J.D. Howard, both of whom will be featured in more detail in the May issue of Overdrive. Take a listen:

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Built on a shoestring budget, the Snows utilized cast-off load bars, lumber and inexpensive plywood for interior shelving. They got a deal on the door assembly at Camping World by purchasing a returned item for a fraction of the typical $700 cost. The pair were in the middle of prepping the rig for show at Mid-America last month when this picture was taken, hence the relative mess of materials in the bottom of the walk-in compartment.