Superhero Design Hub Proposal · Victory Truck Body · / 11

Prepared for Victory Truck Body

Every quote, built before you send it.

A configurator and quote platform for the 80% of bodies that do not come off a standard list.

  • Live demo already built
  • All 26 option groups encoded
  • Dealer ready links

Prepared exclusively for Rustin Cassway and Tarik Shaheen · August 2026

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01 A note from me

Hey Rustin, hey Tarik,

I want to start by being straight about what this is.

When Tarik sent through the option list, I did not sit down and write a proposal. I built the thing instead. Everything in the next section already exists, it is live, and you can click it in about ten seconds. If you decide not to go ahead, you keep all of it anyway.

Rustin, you and I have worked together on a few projects now, so you know roughly how I operate. What you might not know is that before this I ran and sold my own fabrication shop.

So when Tarik walked me through how custom specs come in, I recognised it straight away, though from the other end of it. Standing in the shop on a Friday afternoon, waiting on a drawing that would tell me what somebody had actually meant.

After I built the demo I spent a week going through your industry properly. Not skimming competitors, but working through what other body builders actually offer their customers, what software sits behind it, and what it costs. Some of what I found is in section 04 and I think it is genuinely useful to you either way.

Then I found something nobody in your industry appears to be doing at all. That is in section 09, and it is not part of what I am quoting for. It is there because I think you should be the ones to do it.

I am not a large software company. My advantages are that I am quick, I am considerably better value, and I already understand your shop floor. Everything below is priced to reflect that.

ThanksStephen

02 Already done, no charge

Already done,
no charge

Before quoting anything, here is what is already built and working. All of it is yours regardless of what you decide.

3D body model built from your own STEP file, parametric across length, width and height

$650

72 frame turntable render of the configured body

$400

Live quote microsite: cinematic header, spec ledger, dimensioned interior with animated measurements

$1,750

All 26 option groups from Tarik's list encoded, with the dependency rules live

$850

Working configurator with a scale elevation that redraws as you specify

$1,250

One week of industry research, summarised in sections 04 and 09

$900

Total

$0$0

I have costed those at the low end deliberately. Taken individually they are components, and most of their real value only appears once the whole system is running and hosted. But they are built, they work, and they are yours either way.

03 What I found

What I found

These are your numbers, not mine. Tarik gave me all four.

0%

Roughly one in five van bodies ships on standard options only. The other four need custom engineering. Custom is not your edge case, it is your business.

Prose, not data

Custom work arrives as quote text plus typed location comments. Somebody in engineering then has to read those sentences and work out what was meant. Every one of those is a round trip, and every round trip is a chance to get it wrong.

Hand drawn

Your leasing customers ask for dimensioned layout drawings before they will fund a body. Those drawings do not exist in your system, so they get drawn by hand, one at a time.

Text only

What the customer actually receives is a text quote. On an order that is 80% custom, you are asking them to buy something they cannot picture.

None of that is a criticism of how you work. It is how nearly everyone in your industry works. But it does mean there is a gap between the moment you quote and the moment somebody signs, and that gap is where deals go quiet.

04 Where the market is

Where the
market is

I built the demo first and researched the market afterwards, which turned out to be the right order, because what I found was that the biggest company in your segment has already proven the idea works.

Morgan Truck Body runs a 3D Build Your Truck configurator, built for them by a specialist called Certusoft. A buyer picks a chassis, configures a body in 3D, the software checks compatibility automatically, and a quote request goes in at any hour. Their configurable range is 12 to 26 feet, 96 to 102 inches wide, 97 to 103 inches high, which is effectively the same envelope as yours.

Tarik, you will know it better than I do.

I am not raising this to say anyone is beating you. I am raising it because it means you do not have to take a risk on whether this approach works. It has been validated at the top of your market by a company that could afford to be certain before they spent the money.

The difference is what it costs to get there. Independent sources put a 3D configurator with manufacturing integration at $75,000 to $250,000 and upwards. Salesforce CPQ projects alone run to a median of around $88,000 over fourteen weeks. Even the 3D model production on its own is quoted at €500 to €2,000 per part.

Here is the part I found more interesting.

Everyone else in your industry gets faster by taking choice away. Morgan runs six pre configured models, a Pre Built programme and a Fastrak line. Knapheide pushes buyers through 250 plus upfit partners. The industry answer to configuration being slow is to configure less.

You cannot do that, because 80% custom is the business. So the answer has to be the other one.

Not fewer options, just instant custom ones.

0%

of manufacturers who put configuration behind a rules engine report quote turnaround cut by more than half, with accuracy up 57%.

(2024 CPQ market analysis)

$0

returned for every $1 spent over three years, and quoting efficiency up 56%.

(Nucleus Research)

0%

up to 40% higher conversion from visual configuration.

(Epicor, and I will flag that this one is the vendor's own figure rather than independent research, so treat it as directional.)

On an 80% custom mix, cutting quote turnaround in half is not an efficiency saving. It is capacity you did not have to hire for.

05 The demo, live

The demo, live

Everything below is real and running. No mockups.

Four minutes, me walking through it

Walkthrough video poster

Four minutes, me walking through it · watch at the proposal link

→What your salesperson uses

Specify a body, watch the rules fire, then press Generate.

victory.superherodesignhub.com/configurator →What your customer receives

The quote page for a worked example, Q-33800. Scroll it on your phone.

victory.superherodesignhub.com/quote
Live on this page

One last thing. This page is running the same tracking I am proposing for your quote pages. It knows how far you scrolled, which sections you spent time on, and how much of the video you watched. Ask me what it says about your visit and I will tell you, because that is exactly what your salespeople would get on every quote they send.

06 Phase One

Phase One

This is what I am quoting for.

What it does

  • Every quote becomes its own branded link, showing that customer's exact body. Not a photograph of something similar.
  • The same specification produces a print ready PDF, so the link and the document can never disagree with each other.
  • A 360 degree turntable of the configured body.
  • Dimensioned elevations, generated automatically. This is the drawing your leasing customers ask for, the one that gets drawn by hand today.
  • The full specification ledger, with anything non standard flagged.
  • Read and watch analytics on every quote. Who opened it, how far they got, whether they came back. That last one is when to pick the phone up.

What it removes

  • Typed location comments. Eight of your 26 option groups say "requires location comments". Those become structured fields, so engineering receives data instead of sentences.
  • Rule violations reaching engineering at all. Hardwood scuff without hat posts, a walkramp too long for the body, no switch specified without the motion dome. All caught at the point of specification, in front of the salesperson.
  • The "what does it actually look like" phone call.
The pricePhase One

Setup

$18,500

Half at commencement, half at go live.

Platform

$1,497$997

per month, $997 for you. Starts at go live, not before. No minimum term, thirty days notice, cancel whenever you like.

The monthly covers hosting, all render compute, unlimited quote links, support, and two hours a month of changes. New option values, a new RAL colour for instance, are free. Whole new option groups get quoted, because that is a new part, a new render and a new rule.

What is and is not included

This covers one body range, the dry freight van body described by the 26 group option list Tarik sent.

It does not cover your other ranges. If you want them added, they are $6,500 each on the same basis, and I would rather tell you that now than surprise you later.

I will need STEP files for the option parts, the same way you sent the example body. If those arrive late the timeline moves by the same number of days, which is the only honest way to put it.

Two rounds of revisions on the render look are included.

If any of that is priced wrong for how you actually work, say so and we will look at it. I would rather adjust the shape than lose the job over it.

07 Phase Two and Three, previewed not sold

Phase Two and Three,
previewed not sold

Nothing in this section is bundled into the price above. Both get quoted properly once Phase One is running and we both know more.

Phase One puts the specification in front of the customer. What follows takes the same specification further into the business.

Phase Two. Into the shop.

Quoted after Phase One
A

A drag to scale canvas with snapping, so a salesperson places a side door or an E track row by moving it, with interference checked live while the customer is watching.

B

A bill of materials mapped to your own part numbers.

C

Shop drawings and flat patterns produced straight from the configured spec.

That is the point where this stops being a sales tool and starts being production infrastructure. Indicatively $15,000 to $25,000, fixed once it is scoped.

Phase Three. Out to the market.

Not quoted yet
A

The configurator on victorytruckbody.com, so customers and dealers can specify a body themselves at any hour rather than waiting for somebody to be at a desk. That is the piece Morgan already has.

B

Dealer accounts, so every dealer works in their own space with their own quotes.

C

The finished specification pushed straight into Salesforce and your production system, so nothing gets typed in twice and nothing gets typed in wrong.

Quoted when we get there. It depends entirely on how your dealer arrangement works, which is one of the things I would like to understand properly first.

I am not asking you to decide on either of these now. They are here so you can see where this goes, and so you know I am not planning to disappear after Phase One.

08 Rollout

Rollout

Twelve weeks from commencement to go live.

Commencement

Week 150% invoice

50% invoice. STEP files for option parts requested

Modelling

Weeks 2 to 5

Parametric master built, option parts modelled

Render catalogue

Weeks 5 to 7

Shell variants and option passes rendered and cached

Rules and configurator

Weeks 6 to 8

Your 26 groups wired with dependencies

Quote pages

Weeks 8 to 10

Template, PDF output, analytics

Review

Weeks 10 to 11

Two revision rounds on the render look

Go live

Week 1250% invoice

50% invoice. Monthly begins

For context, the median Salesforce CPQ project runs to around fourteen weeks, so twelve is quick for work of this kind. I have built some slack into those stages on purpose, because bespoke work always finds something.

The only thing that can move this is the option part files. Everything else is on me.

09 Further recommendations

Further
recommendations

None of this is quoted for and none of it is part of what is above. It came out of the week I spent going through your industry, and it seemed more useful to you written down than kept to myself.

The gap nobody fills

Every system in your industry stops at the sale.

Certusoft's stops at the order and the bill of materials. Work Truck Solutions stops when the vehicle sells. Morgan's parts store is a general catalogue, not tied to any particular body. As far as I can find, nothing follows a body after it leaves the yard.

Which is strange, because these bodies last fifteen or twenty years. They get remounted onto new chassis. They get sold on. They need parts the entire time. And nobody owns the record of what any individual one actually is.

Here is what I would do about it. When a quote is won, it stops being a quote and becomes that body's permanent record, tied to its serial number. Exact specification, renders, dimensioned drawings, part numbers, build date, options fitted. Live for the life of the body.

What that gives your customers:

Reorders become one click.

"Twelve more exactly like the 2025 batch" is currently a phone call and somebody digging through files.

Parts get correct on the first try.

"Which door seal fits unit 4471" is a phone call today. It becomes a lookup filtered to that exact body, and it is a parts revenue line you do not currently have.

Residual value.

This is the one I would push hardest. Your leasing customers already demand drawings, which is why they are being drawn by hand. Those same companies remarket equipment at the end of term, and a used body with a full documented specification and drawings is worth more than one with a photograph and a guess. That is a financial benefit to your biggest customer segment that has nothing to do with them buying more trucks.

Remounts.

Bodies outlive chassis. When one gets moved, that record is the only thing that says what it actually is.

The reason I think this matters more than it first sounds: order tracking ends at delivery. This starts at delivery and runs for fifteen years. It would make Victory the system of record for every body you have ever built. Somebody can copy a configurator in six months. Nobody can retroactively own your build history.

And it costs almost nothing to add, because the quote page already is the record. A quote expires after thirty days and archives. A won quote gets promoted to permanent instead. Same mechanism, two outcomes.

Assumption, so please correct me

I could not find anyone in your sector doing this. But dealer only systems are not visible from outside, so if something already does this, tell me and I will stop claiming it is a gap.

Give your dealers something no other dealer has

Morgan and Wabash give their dealers ordering portals. From what I can see, nobody gives dealers customer facing sales material.

Every Victory dealer could have their own version of the configurator and quote pages, carrying their own branding. Fifty dealers walking into fleets with better material than any competitor's dealer is a distribution advantage, and it makes dealers want to lead with Victory rather than whoever else is in their showroom.

I would need to understand how your dealer arrangement actually works before pricing it, so this would be a one off setup per dealer once we know what changes.

Quotes that chase themselves

If quotes are live for thirty days, the day before one expires it can email the customer automatically. "Your quote expires tomorrow, get in touch if you would like it extended or revised."

Free re engagement on every quote that has gone quiet, and it turns the expiry window from an admin problem into a reason to make contact.

Your own promise, delivered

Your website says "You'll always know where your truck bodies are in our production schedule."

I have already built the display for that into the demo quote page. What I do not know is whether you track production in a way that could feed it, or whether customers see any of it today. If you do, connecting the two is a small job. If you do not, that is worth talking about separately, because across the whole industry I could only find one manufacturer offering customers order tracking at all.

One I looked at and decided against

I considered proposing an automatic response system for web enquiries, the sort of thing that acknowledges a lead instantly and routes it to the right person within minutes. There is good research behind it. Responding inside five minutes makes you far more likely to qualify a lead than responding in thirty.

I am not proposing it, because you sell through dealers and salespeople rather than website forms, so it would be solving a problem you do not have.

I have included it because I would rather show you something I rejected and why, than give you a list and let you assume everything on it was chosen carefully.

10 Measured, not promised

Measured,
not promised

Things worth measuring after go live, so this is judged on something other than whether it looks nice.

Time from enquiry to quote in the customer's hands

↓Down

Quotes that come back to engineering for interpretation

↓Down

Dimensioned drawings supplied per quote

↑Up, from effectively zero

Quotes reopened by the customer after first view

↑Up, and now visible

Time your engineers spend reading location comments

↓Down

There are a few things I have assumed and would rather confirm properly during Phase One scoping than guess at now. None of them change the price.

  • How many body ranges you build, as opposed to how many variations of this one
  • How your dealers actually configure and order
  • Whether the visual should appear live in front of the customer or arrive attached to the quote
  • Your current quote turnaround, so we have a starting number to measure against
  • Vector logo and your brand RAL references
  • Which options you count as standard on a base body
  • The walkramp to body length matrix, which I have inferred in the demo and would like confirmed

Everything in the demo is a worked example. Where I did not know something, I filled the gap with a sensible assumption so you could see a complete picture rather than a half built one. All of it adjusts.

11 Your decisions

Your decisions

  1. Decide on Phase One.

    $18,500 setup, $997 per month from go live.

  2. The commencement invoice.

    I will email it across, and from go live I will invoice your accounts team monthly.

  3. Add to section 10.

    Have a look through the open items and tell me anything I have assumed wrongly, anything I have missed, or anything you would want this to do that is not in here yet. Message is fine, it does not need a meeting. The more I know before we start, the less we have to unpick later.

  4. Send three things.

    Vector logo, brand RAL references, and STEP files for the option parts.

That is everything. If the price is wrong, if the scope is wrong, or if there is something in here you would want done differently, tell me and we will sort it out. I would much rather adjust this than have it sit unanswered.

Either way the demo stays live and it stays yours. But I did not build it as a sample. I built it because I think it is the right thing for Victory to have, and I would like to be the one who finishes it properly.

ThanksStephen