Engineering:Ford E300

Ford manufactured the Econoline (E300) Box van starting in 1973. It was Ford's direct entry into the commercial midsize heavy equipment markets. Prior to this introduction, only larger fleet customers could purchase a roll-up full-rear-door box van. Its release enabled a larger group of business and trades to purchase the vehicles. Ford continues to sell updated versions of this very successful design to this day. It has changed to the E350 but the concept is still the same. The 14 gauge welded steel boxes ranged from 10 feet to 18 feet in length, with an interior height of 6 feet 2 inches. The boxes also known as the "high cube design" were designed with square corners and edges to optimize their cargo space. This design allowed them to load and carry items with square edges like cabinets, without wasting space due to the ceilings interior concave shape of other manufactures vans of the time. Their roll up rear door is full width enabling much larger and heavier loads to be place into them with a forklift. The E300 Box Van started as a one-ton configuration. They could be ordered with two ton configurations also. When ordered with the heavier suspension they had a payload capacity of 4300 pounds.

The E300 box vans’ gross vehicle weight rating vary determined by the suspension configuration at manufacturing. An average GVW for these is 8,300 pounds unladen. The payload and weight capacities are due mostly to the twin I beam front end, and rear end taken directly from the F250 pickup truck. The box van came standard with 12 × 3″ front and 12 × 12½″ rear brakes. They have been a favorite of many of the major moving equipment rental chains since Ford first released them. They have a lower rear deck for ease of loading than larger truck mounted boxes of their load capacity.