Chuck’s Trucks

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being invited to Chuck Courter’s hangar-like warehouse down in Parker, CO, so that I could get a first hand look at his workspace, talk to him about his business, and to get a look at some in-progress food trucks that he and his crew are madly working to finish and get out on the street in the coming weeks and months.

But here’s a little background first.  Chuck’s company is called Team 20, LLC, named after his son’s racing team and number, and they specialize in building kiosks and refurbishing older step vans into the wonderful, eye-catching, high rolling gourmet food trucks you’ve been seeing all around Denver for the past 7 or so months.  As far as I know, he is the only shop in town doing this kind of work.  So much work, in fact, that he’s had to take his craigslist ad offline not once but twice in the last year.

Team 20’s first project was The Denver Biscuit Company’s mobile shop, The Biscuit Bus. They followed that success up shortly thereafter with Sully’s Slice Truck.  Currently, the queue for trucks is only getting longer and longer for Chuck and his crew: the just-about-to-be-completed Stick It To Me truck, Chicago Louie’s patty wagon, Beckie and Igor’s El Caribe Arepera, Moe’s BBQ trailer, and an as yet unnamed Sushi truck are a guarantee of many months’ worth of work to come.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day, according to Chuck, to do all that he wants to get done.  And that’s a crying shame because he’s got some big and wonderful ideas swirling around in that there warehouse of his.

So I arrived at his shop on a Saturday when no one other than Chuck was working.  He told me that’s the only time he can do anything fun because during the week, he’s usually on the phone chasing down parts and talking with clients while his crew are ferociously pounding away on the trucks under his supervision and care.

He showed me around and we got to talking about the food truck movement in Denver and how it’s just skyrocketing.  He shared with me his vision for how he’d build his own food truck, but that’s his secret for now so you won’t read about it here. Not until, that is, the man can get a break and some much needed capital.  He also spoke about how to make the industry more sustainable, and it occurred to me that this man is passionately, wholeheartedly invested not only his own business, but in helping the industry succeed and flourish because he believes in it so strongly.

Here are a few tidbits of our conversation to give you a little peek into Chuck, his business and even some of his tools!

How did you get into doing building food trucks?

For the past 45 years I’ve been into all kinds of metal fabricating and many years in body shops and several years ago I contracted with a local company to fabricate some food carts and kiosks. We had done not only metal fabricating but got into a lot of residential remodeling and stuff like that over the years so I was familiar with working with a lot of different types of materials.  So about a year ago, I decided I wanted to get out of residential remodel business so I decided to put an ad out on craigslist to build and repair carts and kiosks, and to build food trucks and trailers and my phone immediately went crazy so I took the ad off because I wasn’t ready yet.  Then last January I put it back on and it just went crazy.  Recently, I’ve taken it off again.

Do you have a favorite part of working on these trucks, or a favorite process?

I think it’s the final putting it together is what I like the best, the finished work.  I’m trying to get all my guys trained to do it all.  They all have their favorite parts though.  Like Louis, he is an extremely good fabricator and I think that’s what he’d rather be doing, but he’s one of my best electricians too.  But then when it comes to finishing the breaker panel, I think my son is the best at that.  With me, I don’t get to work on the trucks that much…I’m the parts chaser and talking to customers and all that.  All Spring, Summer and Fall I’ve found myself doing that all day and then working in here all night and that’s why I like my weekends down here because I don’t have the phone ringing or chasing parts.  I don’t have my help down here and I can come in here and build a fuel tank and have some fun!

Do you design the trucks yourself or do you work in conjunction with the owners?

I like the owners to know what they want. Nate and Ezra (Stick It To Me) have spent hours standing inside this truck and they gave me a nice pencil drawing of what they wanted and have made very little changes to that.  They put so much thought into what their flow needs to be from order to pick up.  I had one customer who after we got into it had no worldly idea and I would never do another job like that again.  It got to a point to where it’s just not worth it to them or me.  We get enough of these guys that are serious about it and put thought into it.  It just makes it fun whenever they know what they want. I like innovation, you know.  I like people that get creative. And to me, that’s what sets you apart.  I like being different and new ideas.

What are some of the challenges you face in revamping these trucks?

Each one of these is a full set of challenges because it’s like you are trying to fit 10lbs of you know what into a 5lb bag.  It literally is and you know these great big generators, we’ve had to protrude them out the sides 6 inches to make them fit.  And then that poses another problem because the generator should be ahead of the rear axel but for this, they wanted all under cook top refrigerators on both these trucks, so I can’t put my generator there so I have to put it back here. And then that gets in the way of a lot of gas piping.  And so I have trouble looking down the road far enough to stay ahead of all of these problems but I’m getting better at it.  I’d have to say that they are getting easier, because we are incorporating more into them, but they still have their challenges.

What’s your tool of choice?

My tool of choice is that piece…it’s hydraulic computer controlled press brake…it actually bends metal.  The depressed economy has helped me a lot in acquiring some of this shop equipment.  And this machine here…I wanted one of these since I was 17 yrs old.  It’s an Ironworker, but it’s a metal fabricating machine.  It will punch holes in metal, it’ll shear metal, it’s an angle iron shear, and a press brake.  But I bought that for cheap and it had virtually never been used.

If you had your own food truck how would you design it?

I may build a food truck for myself one day.  It’s not going to look like these trucks.  It’ll look like a trolley car and build a complete theme around it. (Chuck tells me in more detail some of his ideas, but I’m remaining silent on this one) And I’m not going to tell you my food choice for that, it’s not my favorite food but it’s one that I think would work.  But at this point in time, I don’t think we are going to have an opening in our workload to do it this year but I’d just like to do it so I can incorporate a lot of our ideas on one show piece that’s out on the streets everyday.   I think it would be good for our business and I think it would be fun.

And if we design and build our own purpose built chassis, we can build everything in, and yes it’s going to cost more money than going back East and buying one of these trucks, but on the other hand I think it’s money well spent because I think there are so many benefits to it and I don’t think it’s going to cost that much more.  We are doing so much modification to these that you would bypass that cost if you were using purpose built.  Sooner or later someone’s going to do it and I think I’d like to be the one to do it.  And if I can find the money to do it, I am going to do it.  I don’t particularly want to sell a customer on that idea.  I’d rather build one first and have something for someone to look at instead of just my vision.

Are you a foodie?

Oh yeah.  I LOVE to eat, mostly meat and potatoes.  I’ll go out of my way to stop at Atomic Cowboy to eat his biscuits and gravy.  I like good food and I like to cook.

So there you have it.  Chuck Courter and his Team 20 crew are working long and hard to keep gourmet food trucks hitting the pavement.  For you owners out there, you’re in luck as he also mentioned wanting to start up a mobile maintenance business to service your sometimes ailing trucks without having to haul them all the way down to Parker.  Keep giving this man your business so he can make it happen!  But right now, this labor of love needs more hours in the day.  However, for Chuck, it’s all about fun.  He loves what he does, and he wants to make sure he and his people continuing to have fun above and beyond anything else.  In his own words, “life is too short to get stuck in a rut”.  Or even a pothole for that matter.

If you have any questions for Chuck and Team 20, you can contact him at team20llc AT comcast.net

Cheers!