In our opinion, it must have been the worst earnings model: operating food trucks. Of course the idea is crazy: You buy an old-fashioned, classic bus and turn it into a mobile kitchen / food distribution unit.
But if you come to a meeting, meeting or fair where ten of those things are arranged in a semicircle shape? When you realize that you have had to pay serious money for food trucks? That there are Food Trucks that have cost just half a ton?
And there is a good chance that there are one or more of those food trucks in your area to take advantage of the 'oliebollen' sale today. The food supply from the trucks varies from simple to highly exotic. At least for people who find fried insects highly exotic.
The most commonly used base buses are the usual ones. VW vans have the disadvantage that the engine lives in the rear. Citroën HY buses are almost the exemplary candidates for conversion.
Converting that into a food truck - and bear in mind that the end result can also cost just half a ton of euros - is something that many classic enthusiasts and people with warm beating technical hearts are very concerned about. First, a classic is being 'sacrificed' to a trend that washed across the country like a tsunami. Secondly, many of the conversion work on the former good delivery vans has been done in such a bad, inconsistent and clumsy way that you get tears through your back.
Of course, buses and vans have often been converted in the past to what the owner thought was better suited or more attractive. So you can argue about the damage to originality.
The food truck event and oliebollen story became topical yesterday. At Potomac Classics we saw a Borgward B611 in the 'project cars' department. On the front, faded letters indicate that this car once drove for 'Tibi Versand', a kind of German clothing mail order. In the latter days old Borgward has driven his kilometers in the Russian language area. You can see that at least on the sticker on the back.
And now he is in Terborg. And that is a lot less to the east than his last place of residence and residence. The car is characteristic of a parallel sales flow. More and more classic specialists are offering 'projects'.
That can be very nice, special cars or motorbikes. But usually they are classics of which even a blind person immediately sees that, from a commercial point of view, no profit can be gained by renovating / restoring such a find or whatever.
But for a passionate buyer, such a classic - which often comes to the trader as a sort of 'by-catch' - can be a great purchase. And remember: In the trade, all prices are asking prices. And on the provider side, there certainly needs to be quite some room for this type of project.
Oh yes: the Borgward B611 was built from 1959 at Borgward in Bremen. The van had 1,5 tons of loading capacity. Production stopped in 1962. The B611 was there as a closed bus, passenger bus and as a box truck. The engine was an 1,5 liter gasoline engine or an 1800 cc Diesel.
Almost 15.000 are made of it. And that is even worse with most than with this one. A copy that hopefully will not be a food truck, but simply a wonderfully nostalgic camper.
And the oliebollen? We bake it ourselves.
