Ideal height for truck
 

I have recently purchased a Daf 4x4 for over landing travel. It currently has a communication body on it however I want something a bit more spacious. However what is the maximum height I should be looking at? The body at the moment is currently 6ft. I have been looking at an 8ft body. However I was trying to visualise the body and feel it may be a bit high for the vehicle. What height is everyone else running? What is the max height for main ferry crossings? Many thanks for any help!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I cannot comment on what others are using and do not have a truck myself but if you plan to ship it anywhere something that fits inside a container both width and height wise is useful, otherwise it can get expensive and if too wide quite difficult.

Thanks Mark, it's not my intention to put it in a shipping container to go anywhere, I just wanted some of people's thoughts/ use their ideas on usable realistic height.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not so much a realistic height , but an EU regulation max height 4mtrs , this is strictly not applicable for UK registered vehicle , as UK has no definable maximum , but when traveling in EU you would need to pay particular attention to clearances and the alternative routes posted for over 4mtr vehicles. Rear overhang is allowable upto 60% of wheelbase of vehicle HTSH ps ferries height limit usually 4.5mtrs most routes

Ideally you need to keep your height to the minimum that is pratical. Reasons for this are mainly to keep your centre of gravity as low as possible (side slopes),low arches,overhanging trees and rock overhanges on narrow mountain tracks.
I would suggest internal height to be 15cm above head height allowing for lighting and roof vents

Thanks for the advice. I can understand the rational behind the 15cm. It's a good basis. At the moment I have 1 cm above my head. But it does blend into the cab quite nicely. This cab is 6ft. I wonder what drag would be like with another 1-2 ft?

I currently have around 2cm above my head inside my truck and find that it is plenty. The only disadvantage is that many guests have to stoop. The reduced height is a huge advantage regarding trees on narrow forest tracks, bridges in old cities, and low power lines in less developed countries.

I am 181cm heigh and so the box in my truck is likely to be usable for many others if I ever choose to sell it. It would probably be unwise to invest too much money in a box with headroom of much lower as you will be reducing your potential market if you ever come to sell the truck.

My truck is around 3.5m heigh, I would say that I could have added another 20 cm without major complications, but any higher would have caused problems regularly.

Thanks nick for the feedback do you have any photo's of your truck. I am really in a strange predicament with this body. I am really 50:50 on it. And it's really strange as I am never undecided on anything. If I had the 2cm above my hair I probably would be ok. But I only have about 1 in the centre and it's so frustrating.

truck height
 

hi there we had our truck at 2.7m high and found this to be a good height for south america, the width of a truck does not normally stop you going anywhere its always the height, and remember overlanding is all about seeing new sights and meeting new people, so hot countries you will be outside most of the time and when you are inside your truck you are mainly sitting down so height is not so important, we have seen many a big truck all over the world where the owners turn up and stay inside their truck to avoid the locals,
just my opinion
enjoy the build

If you are really concerned about height then use the cab height as the datum , and make the rear body so that its a raising upper section , that drops down for travel , to that height sort of like an outside pop top. coaches , which operate all over the world are usually between 3.5 and 4mtrs OAH . This is the sort of thing

Hi Monster, thanks for the input, its all building a good case. I totally agree about overlanding is seeing new places. And thats why I am building a truck rather than using the overland Landrover that I have.

See dtd-overland for those trips. What I want to do on the next trip is Scandanavia, and potentially a bit of winter travel. Its not always about the temped climates. I want to see the extremes too!

Totally get you about spending time indoors too. After travelling in Morocco I see how hot it gets inside. Would not want to be in one of these when its that temp! I think I have a route forward with the cab situation. The cab that is on it at the moment will be coming off I am 90% sure of this.

I have potentially found a refrigerated body its about 8ft in heigh (will be reducing the height to around 7ft) this will keep the entire height of the truck under 4m (about 3.5) and only a ft above where it currently sits now. But will have alot more freedom to expand my design upon it.

Watch this space... and the blog on the webpage above.

Shave your hair off?!? doh :smartass:

Just regarding centre of gravity, taking a Mog U1300l for instance, the bare truck chassis with cab is about 5500kg, and its normally a max 7500kg truck. Two tons of payload which will mainly be on the floor (water, batteries etc) and I don't think adding a bit to the actual box height will affect the stability too much. It will look and feel wobbly but big tyres on long travel suspension on a flexy frame will do that. Putting heavy stuff on the roof would be another thing though!

The wife and I are not tall, and the box we hope to make soon will perhaps be 1900mm externally. I would rather avoid hitting things while driving than consider resale in the future. No holes in the ceiling either, 60mm walls and ceiling like the posh truck campers from Unicat etc. Supposedly with that much insulation you can open the windows in the morning, let the cold morning air in, and when its really hot outside at midday it will still be cool inside if the blinds have been drawn to keep the sun out. Maybe :)

We'll aim at 3.5m and end up a bit over probably, big tyres being the culprit I'm sure but big boots are essential :). Our now sold Mog based camper was 3.9m and was a bit too tall for driving, but lovely for living inside for months on end.

Good luck bier

Just whack in a pop top to give yourself another 2' of clearance when the top is up. Downside they can be a bit leaky if not fitted well.

Our Mog is 3.4m, occasionally we've stopped to check on clearance for low hanging cables, but not had a problem yet. I wouldn't want to go much higher though! Don't forget, the higher it is, the more branches you'll need to clear to get through.....


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

dunno about off road, but when I used to drive trucks for a living, 11'6" seemed to be a bit of a threshold. My artic was just under that and I just managed to clear no end of places where another couple of inches height would have stopped me

I drive a 3.67 m truck.

I would greatly prefer to stay under 3.2m. Tis seems to be the sweet spot for low bridges. Also towing services and roadside assistance seem to get more expensive.

Other sweet spots seem to be 2.80, 2.30-2.40, 2.10, 1.90m

We aimed for a maximum height of 3.5 metres , Which is exactly what we are.

We were slightly under, then had new leaf springs fitted.

We are 1950 mm inside the cabin and its more than enough.

It was a simple formula that got us to this size.

Garage tall enough to put a bike in + Bed base and Matress + wife sitting up in bed drinking tea = 1950 mm

Neil

Cloud 9 is Born

Our truck is 3.45 mtrs, slightly higher than the driver's cab. The living unit is almost 2 mtrs standing height inside which is comfortable enough for people shorter than me...
If you build something make it high enough to stand in. Don't worry too much about overall height as long as you don't get too close to 4 meters which is the minimum height for most bridges and tunnels in most of Europe.
IMHO fuel consumption is irrelevant for a truck this size, it won't matter much if you are 3.5 or 3.8 mtrs.
Most normal truck/trailers are about 3.8 mtrs so that should be a max guideline.

My camper is currently 3.83m with unmounted spares on roof. I'm trying to get them off, it will then be 3.53m including 10cm roof vent. With tires partially deflated with CTIS down to 33% highway pressure (takes just 3-4 minutes to deflate) it will get down to 3.48m, just below a 3.5m "cutoff". I'll still have one mounted and one unmounted spare on the back of the camper.

Charlie

Test.
 

With all this talk about height, I wonder where you are going.
If you are going to drive roads in developed countries, you can match the height of the largest delivery trucks and get through almost anywhere but, if you are thinking about going off sealed roads there are other factors to consider.
A lot of vehicles I have rescued off road are tall and the reason they have got into trouble is that the owners have been worried about tipping over when the track is around the side of a hill and they have driven somewhere else and come to grief. The other scenario is a steep road shoulder and they fall over into the roadside drain. Go somewhere where earth roads get wet and soft and one side sinks and you can end up with the truck lying down.


If you are thinking about going anywhere where the roads are earth there is a very good possibility that you will encounter a sloping road or very deep ruts. If you want peace of mind, test your loaded vehicle by setting up some big restraints over the top of the box and jack or lift with a fork lift to the balancing point and make a small pendulum inclinometer for the cab so you can see if you are safe when driving in these places.


Al.

Great info here, thanks.

My RB44 is 2.7m high and 2.13m wide. I couldn't get through several villages in the mountains of northern Portugal because of these dimensions so I wouldn't want to go any bigger. The big downside is that it is only about 1.7m in the back!!

Where I’m going?
On the unmade road to Cape York in Queensland, not exactly an unusual destination, I had to use a long handled tree pruning saw. In Strasbourg I couldn’t get into a campground through the front because there’s a ~3.7m bridge and at that time I had unmounted spares on the roof. I had to use the back service entry. And there’s that 3.5m bridge in a village to get under to access Lake Baikal beach....
Now tires on the back and down to 3.55m. Can get to 3.49 with CTIS deflation.
Obviously the 3.5m “barrier” still a close squeeze; but what can one expect with a 12.5 ton truck with 395 tires?

And with no tires on the roof, the heaviest things are solar panels. The COG is little affected whether the top is 3.7 or 3.3; the plastic panels are virtually weightless. Tipover angle is easily calculated with a few measurements and simple formulas involving only trigonometry.
Mine increased from 29 to 31 degrees by decreasing the wheel offset with Hutchinson wheels. My track width is about 1.97m. The sine of 30 deg is 0.5. Believe me, one gets very apprehensive when one side is even much less than 1m lower than the other.