In May, Marshall began looking for a truck. It took about a month to get the truck retrofitted for its new purpose and then painted and covered in tarp. Marshall takes Dinah out to Solomon Park on Sunday afternoons. She’ll be there Aug. 9 from 2-5 p.m. with Chick-Fil-A serving free cookies and lemonade.
Dinah, as Marshall calls the flower truck, is actually a 2015 Japanese mini-dump truck. It maxes out at 55 mph.
“I fill it up for like eight bucks and it goes almost 300 miles,” she said. “I won’t take it on the interstate – just take little back roads.”
A metal frame was fashioned to go over the truck’s bed and then covered with tarp material. The frame was fitted with pneumatic cylinders so that Marshall can simply lift the sides and rear when she’s open and then close them when she’s done. A carpenter built a custom bed with 19 holes cut for the deep galvanized flower buckets (“Those flowers don’t budge,” Marshall said.) Storage for supplies doubles as a flat workspace for wrapping arrangements.
Marshall buys her flowers from an online wholesaler. When she gets them, she puts them in water and flower food and stores them in a cooler.
“It takes about 30 minutes to load with the flowers – I usually trim them and add some food – so, it takes about 30 minutes to load the truck in total and maybe 10 minutes to set up at the most,” Marshall said.
Marshall has had her daughters, Hollis and Kate Rane, and her mother, Dianne Marshburn, helping her. She was nervous at first about how the flower truck would be received. But, so far, customers love the idea.
