Asian Trucks & Trailers

Wok work — the hottest fire in mobile cooking

Authentic wok hei (the char that makes a stir-fry taste like a stir-fry) requires a flame temperature of 2,000°F+ concentrated under the wok’s curved base. Standard commercial ranges top out around 30,000 BTU per burner — not even close. A real wok station uses a jet-flame or chimney-burner wok range at 80,000-125,000 BTU per well. We install Jade Range Titan or Wolf WKGM-236 2-well jet burners on Thai and Chinese truck builds.

Hood capture on a wok is a distinct engineering problem. The flame plume extends 12-18″ above the wok rim, and the lateral smoke throw during tossing is significant. We specify a Type-I hood at 2.0x standard CFM rating on wok builds, sized to capture the 18″ flame plume plus an 8″ lateral margin. This is the highest hood spec we install on any cuisine.

UL-300 suppression is engineered for the hot plume zone specifically. We run two suppression heads on wok builds — one over the burner deck, one on the downstream capture edge of the hood — because a wok fire behaves differently than a griddle fire.

Sushi prep — cold line isolation

A sushi truck is the opposite of a wok truck. Heat is the enemy. We design sushi builds around a dedicated cold prep line with its own compressor and no heat sources within 4 feet:

• Refrigerated sushi-cut prep table (True TSSU-48-12) — 48″ at 36°F, with 12 refrigerated topping pans across the top rail for roe, cucumber, avocado, tobiko, etc.
• Dedicated fish reach-in (separate from the prep-table fridge) held at 32-34°F. Tuna and salmon handling at 38°F is technically legal but flavor degrades perceptibly.
• Rice warmer held at 86-100°F (target 95°F). The rice is the only hot element on a sushi line, and it’s kept 8+ feet from the cut board to prevent warming the fish.
• Dedicated cut boards for each protein category. Color-coded HDPE (yellow for tuna, blue for cooked, green for vegetable) with a dedicated stainless hand-sink for between-protein rinses.

Sushi builds almost always get an exhaust fan for odor, not a Type-I hood. The only hot equipment is the rice warmer, which is a Type-II vapor hood at most. This keeps the build lighter and the insurance premium significantly lower.

Korean BBQ — tabletop grills and custom exhaust

A mobile Korean BBQ operation is an unusual build. Customers grill their own meat at induction-equipped tables or portable butane burners — which means the truck is half-kitchen, half-dining-room. We’ve built two of these as convertible-panel trailers where one wall drops down to become a patio extension with built-in induction tables.

The in-truck kitchen side runs prep: marinated bulgogi, galbi shortribs, kimchi service, banchan plate-up. Each induction table pulls 3,600W at peak — for a 4-table setup that’s 14.4kW of induction alone. We spec a 15-20kW onboard generator plus 60A shore power for this configuration. Overhead exhaust on the dining-side tables uses a downdraft design (butane grills generate less smoke than charcoal; downdraft is sufficient).

Poke, pho, ramen — specific-purpose builds

Poke: Cold line only. Refrigerated fish prep, refrigerated topping rail (12-pan minimum for the full poke-bar experience), ambient rice station, sauce caddy. Lightest build in the Asian category — often a 12′ trailer with a single 50A service.

Pho: Dominated by a 20-gallon broth kettle held at 180°F. We install a dedicated 60,000 BTU burner for the kettle + a second 30,000 BTU for banh (side) work. Noodle cooking is typically done in a pasta-style boiler rather than a wok — the gentler water handling preserves the rice-noodle texture. Broth storage: we add a separate reach-in freezer for overnight broth because most pho operators run a 24-hour bone stock that’s pre-made at a commissary.

Ramen: Similar to pho but with higher ticket volume and more intense noodle-work. A ramen truck needs a dedicated noodle basket rack (we install 6-basket rails) so each order cooks independently. Broth bar has 2-3 held wells for tonkotsu, shoyu, miso, shio — each served at 185°F+.