Food Truck repair for Laguna Niguel owners

Most damage on a working kitchen truck arrives at low speed. Kerbs, alley posts, dumpster enclosures and the corners of commissary lots account for far more of it than highway collisions do. The body takes it at the rear corner, the lower side rail or the step well, and the structural consequence is the same each time: the box goes slightly out of square. On a plain delivery van nobody notices. On a kitchen truck the service window notices at once, because the window frame is fastened into the side wall and its track only runs correctly while the opening stays parallel.

The tell is a window that binds at the same point in its travel, or a latch that needs a shove. Owners live with that for a season and blame the hardware. Measuring the opening corner to corner in both directions settles it in two minutes. Squaring the wall before the window goes back is the difference between a repair and an annual repair. Window install runs $400 to $3,500, two to fourteen hours, and that band assumes the opening is true. Where it is not, wall and roof skin replacement at $1,000 to $15,000 is the line that actually applies.

LP gas system service and leak repair runs $285 to $2,500, one to ten hours, and is handled by a certified technician only. That covers regulators, hose runs, hard piping, tank mounts and leak testing. A propane line routed against a wall post before a collision moved that post is not something to eyeball and sign off. It gets pressure tested, and where the run has to change it changes properly rather than with a longer hose and a hopeful clamp. Hazmat and disposal is $45 flat and applies wherever chemicals, refrigerant or LP are involved.

Exhaust hood and makeup air are structural as much as mechanical, because the hood hangs from the roof structure and the roof penetration is a sealed joint that flexes every mile. Ventilation system repair and upgrade runs $300 to $3,500. Fire suppression on a commercial hood is a separate licensed trade, and this shop does not service, recharge, inspect or certify a suppression system. What happens here is body and structural repair around it, with the owner's suppression contractor scheduled by the owner before the unit goes back to work.

A kitchen truck runs on whichever of three sources it has: an onboard generator, shore power at the commissary, or an inverter and battery bank carrying the light loads. Generator service and repair runs $400 to $8,500, two to thirty five hours. Transfer switch and shore power diagnostics runs $285 to $1,500. Twelve volt and one hundred twenty volt diagnostics and repair runs $285 to $5,000. Mechanical and electrical labour is $260 per hour and diagnostic time is $285 per hour with a one hour minimum, credited against an authorised repair.

Electrical faults on these units cluster at the additions rather than the original harness. An upfitter loom is often routed along the same post a collision deforms, spliced where a cabinet was cut in, and unlabelled from end to end. Chasing an intermittent under a counter run is diagnostic time, not guesswork, and the honest answer to how long it takes is a range rather than a number. Where a repair opens a wall anyway, we relabel and re-route what is exposed, because the next fault will be found by somebody who was not here for this one.

County and state health authorities set requirements for food service units: surfaces that clean, seams that seal, sink counts, water and waste capacity ratios, and finishes that survive the chemicals used on them. Those requirements belong to the owner and to the owner's inspector. OCRV Center does not perform, file, arrange, schedule or certify a health department inspection, and does not represent an owner to any agency. What the requirements do change is the repair itself, because a rebuilt interior has to go back in materials that suit the standard the unit operates under.

In practice the material conversation happens before teardown rather than after it. Stainless, aluminium and sealed composite panel behave differently at a seam and cost differently to fit. Flooring is a coved detail rather than a straight lay, and the coving is why flooring on a kitchen unit takes longer than a plain floor band suggests. Interior build out and conversion runs $2,500 to $50,000, twenty to two hundred and fifty hours. An owner who names the standard at estimate stage gets a repair that fits it. An owner who names it afterwards gets a second invoice.

Fresh and waste tanks on a kitchen unit hang under the floor or sit in a compartment, strapped to a frame that a rear or side impact loads directly. Cracked tanks leak slowly and the first symptom is a damp subfloor rather than a puddle on the ground. Fresh water plumbing service and repair runs $285 to $4,500. Black and gray tank repair or replacement runs $750 to $8,500, five to thirty five hours. Water damage restoration and subfloor replacement runs $750 to $15,000, and under a heavy equipment load the subfloor is not optional to repair.

Sequencing all of that against a date is the actual job. Tanks and plumbing before floor. Floor before cabinetry. Electrical rough-in before panels. Booth time booked against parts arrival rather than against optimism. Body and paint labour is $210 per hour, paint supplies are calculated at $55 per paint hour and body supplies at $5 per body hour. The order is not negotiable, and a shop that offers to compress it is offering to do part of the work twice while the owner waits.

• Wall squared and measured before the service window and track go back
• Propane runs pressure tested after any structural movement
• Interior materials agreed against the owner's operating standard before teardown
• Tanks, plumbing and electrical proven before flooring and cabinetry close