I had been away from shoeing for a few years and wanted to build a practice in a new area we had moved to. Unfortunately, I had parted with my tools and equipment, so I was looking at acquiring everything all over again, including a truck.

As you all know, good-quality tools are expensive, as are good vehicles and shoeing bodies. After acquiring most of what I needed, there just wasn’t enough in the budget for the shoeing body I would have liked. I’m sure I’m not the only farrier to face this situation.

One day while looking through an issue of the American Farriers Journal, I saw an ad for a pull-out truck bed. I thought that perhaps I could build something similar, for a lot less money, that might work nearly as well and get me going until I could afford something better.

Work In Progress

As a result, I have been working on my “work in progress” for several months, making modifications along the way to make the bed more efficient and user friendly. Because I have a short-box pickup, I needed to arrange things so that all of my tools and equipment would fit in the area I had to work with and of course be accessible.

The bed itself is made of 2-by-5/8-inch sheets of plywood, 4 feet wide and 6 feet long, screwed together making a firm base that wouldn’t bend when the weight of all my equipment was placed on it.

Then, wanting…