The flat bed that my son Kevin purchased for his 6490 is a really nice unit. The bed is a full 8 feet x 12 feet with a solid headache bar and came with a class IV hitch as well as a gooseneck pocket. It has a Texas license plate on it, and the tool boxes were filled with 10 gallons of nuts and bolts. There was also a highway sign in one of the boxes, so the natural assumption was that it was part of a municipal department or a highway building contractor fleet. As it came from an auction, one can figure that the base truck had been wrecked in some fashion.
The 6400 by contrast was still equipped with the dump frame. The forward portion was bolted down to prevent bouncing I would guess, but in any event it does not look like the dump had been raised for some time. We are still trying to decide if he wants to keep the dump option or just use the flat bed. Keeping the dump frame would add about 7 inches to the height of the bed. I am neutral on that, it is really up to Kevin. It would mean that we would have to notch out a portion of the gooseneck pocket to get the flat bed to clear the dump ram assembly. That is all in the future, for now I needed it gone.
Our family suffered a terrible loss on January 16th with the death of our nephew in a snowmobile accident. He was married to my niece and was a Kenosha police sergeant. He was a twice Bronze Star recipient from Iraq and just a mountain if a man. I guess I kept working on the truck with earnest to keep my mind on something. Well on Friday the 22nd, was the wake, and I decided that this was going to be the day that we removed the bed.
I had planned the idea of removing the outer rear tires, Jack up the bed from three points, the two tool boxes and the rear, and roll the truck out from under it. Simple.... As you can imagine, emotions were on edge, but everything was going to plan. In a fashion like the game "Jenga", we had our plan in action. Then my brother came by and suggested Kevin reposition sis Jack. That was a mistake as it allowed the jack to roll. I ended up having Kevin pull his pick-up with snowmobile trailer along side so I could attach a come-a-libg to the bed to keep it from moving. The whole thing worked, but it was a bit iffy, and in hindsight may not have been one of my better decisions. In any event, the bed was off, lowered to a safe height and out of the way. It was time to put the 6400 back in the garage, get cleaned up and go through a very difficult next few days.
