A Mobile Veterinary Clinic For Truck Owners

Veterinarians have it tough. Not only are they required to diagnose and treat animals which have no capability of explaining their symptoms, but they are also often called upon to provide care outside of a clinical setting. This is especially true for vets who work with livestock or wild animals in nature preserves and parks.

The Bowie Legacy 5 Mobile Clinic for Veterinarians.

The good news is, when a veterinarian has to make a “house call” (more like “ranch call”), they can bring the office with them. A company called Bowie offers a unique “mobile command center” that fits into the bed of most pickups, including the Toyota Tundra. The Bowie Legacy 5 is a task-focused “Insert Clinic” that provides many of the services that vets require in a package that can be delivered anywhere a four-wheel drive truck can access.

The Bowie Legacy 5 is organized into three compartments – driver side, passenger side, and rear – and is then further subdivided so as to offer storage for important supplies and specialized equipment. The unit offers hot and cold water tanks, as well as a blender-mixer, and it also provides day coolers and night heaters in order to maintain a constant temperature within the truck bed. A waste tank is available to keep potentially hazardous biological materials separate from medical supplies, and a sharps container keeps dangerous items such as used hypodermic needles safely out of reach.

A closer look at the rear of the Bowie Legacy 5.

Auxiliary power can be accessed from either a 12V DC system or an 110V AC system, and a 22-foot power cord makes it simple to route electricity to where it is needed most. Given the amount of electric equipment that is incorporated into the mobile clinic, it makes sense that Bowie offers a built-in diagnostic systems check that helps with remote troubleshooting should any problems be encountered in the field.

The Legacy 5 also offers several options that can be built into the unit, including a refrigerator (crucial for the transportation of certain biological samples and medicines), a surgical tray, locked storage for controlled substances, and a 3-point lift kit. The lift kit makes it easier to use a spreader bar to hoist the clinic up and out of the truck should it ever need to be removed or transferred to another vehicle, although Bowie explained that this typically only ever happens when a truck is sold.

There’s a lot to like about the Bowie Legacy 5 clinic, particularly with respect to its practical design. The low-rise unit barely interrupts sight lines out of the rear window of the Tundra, and it can be used either with or without a tailgate, which adds to its versatility. The entire clinic is completely weatherproofed, so vets will not have to worry about water leakage or damage to sensitive equipment, and the Legacy 5 is designed to quickly disconnect from the truck bed if needed. This is one mobile veterinary clinic that appears to marry form and function together without any compromises.

As far as cost is concerned, most mobile-vet clinic inserts will fall in the $5,000-$15,000 range, with some of the higher-end models crossing the $20,000 barrier. Of course, when it comes to saving a sick animal, it’s worth it.