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In the video, Giertz says it’s been four years since the Truckla was built and she’s been using it as her daily driver ever since. However, it was never completely finished: the custom cargo box was never weatherproof, some trim was unfinished and the removable tailgate stopped working.
“She’s a bit rattled, because the cargo bed isn’t welded in,” Giertz explains in the video. She also has to watch the car when rain comes, sometimes running out in the middle of the night to cover it. “Other than that, she’s great,” Giertz said jokingly.
Years later, Giertz decided it was time to take him to a shop and finally give Truckla the finishing touches he deserved. One of Giertz’s quips is that she never quite finishes a project (she says she finishes about 80 percent), so if someone else finishes the Truckla, she can keep up that habit.
It was found in the shop that miraculously the Truckla has no major issues, including water damage under the bed. So the shop added a fresh new tailgate that can extend, fold down and support up to 500 pounds. They also fixed the chrome trim on the side, which looks really good now, and raised the car a bit too.
As a side mission, Giertz is also involved with robotics company Viam. It’s building another robot that, like Tesla’s hose charger prototype from years ago, can automatically plug in a Tesla to charge at home. The very rugged prototype (named “Chargla”) moves freely on a rolling platform and is hilariously clumsy, but it seems to work. The project is open source, so you could build it yourself if you wanted to.
All in all, Giertz’s wild Tesla pickup project is a great long-term success story, and I’d absolutely love it if Tesla made one like him. Of course, Tesla announced the Cybertruck in 2019 and it may finally ship this summer. But back then, it’s the Truckla, not the Cybertruck, that’s been roaming the streets for years — of wipers.
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