Step vans have been a long-time crew truck favorite for many municipalities, of which Intercontinental Truck Body (ITB) services in Vancouver. These heavy-duty workhorses have a long operational life, can be highly customized, offer spacious cabs with sliding doors, and easy cargo/workshop area access.
They come in a wide range of wheelbases and payload capacities, and with their short hoods and sight-lines, they’re the ideal platform for all kinds of urban applications including power, sewage, water, and maintenance, says Brigade Electronics. These applications all share the common requirement of maximum visibility around the work truck, both while navigating busy work sites and congested city centers with cyclists and pedestrians all round.
“Where large vehicles and busy streets are concerned, you can never be overly cautious when it comes to work truck safety,” ITB’s Sales and Marketing Manager John Van Seters said. “With both stationary and moving obstacles to contend with, a single backup camera solution often doesn’t cut it. There are plenty of cheap backup cameras available, but in the city work site, all-round visibility matters more than anywhere else.
“We were looking for a best-in-class 360 degree video system, and there honestly wasn’t anything else like Brigade’s Backeye system available on the market -- at least nothing that matched it.”
Brigade’s Backeye 360 camera and monitor solution is a high performance system designed to eliminate blind spots, giving operators a complete real-time view of obstacles, dangers, and people in a vehicle’s immediate vicinity; all in a single over-head image. Although ITB originally began installing Backeye 360 units on custom fire/rescue trucks, it quickly became clear that the system would also be very well-suited for its municipal and utilities vehicles, which get even more regular use.
ITB said it has a high commitment to both quality and safety and continues to offer Backeye 360 systems in its step vans and other work trucks to clients in the Pacific Northwest. The company also offers Brigade’s Backscan ultrasonic and Backsense radar-based obstacle detection and warning systems.
“Not all camera systems are created equal,” Van Seters said. “Once vehicle operators see Brigade’s 360 system in action and realize just how much more sophisticated, better and safer it is from other backup cameras, it’s a no brainier.”
