Electric Vehicle Maker Moving Up to Full-Size Trucks : Hauling: Taylor-Dunn’s Electruck isn’t for the street. It’s aimed at such customers as airports, factories and resorts.

Taylor-Dunn, which has made small electric vehicles for more than 40 years, is branching out into full-sized trucks with something called the Electruck.

The vehicle--to be introduced this week at a trade show--can carry 1,500 pounds (including the driver) and travel at speeds up to 30 m.p.h. when empty. But there are drawbacks: The truck’s bank of batteries needs to be recharged every 50 miles, and that takes about 9 1/2 hours.

The truck isn’t intended for street use. Rather, it’s a utility vehicle for airports, college campuses, gated subdivisions, big factories, resorts, government institutions--all customers now for Taylor-Dunn’s smaller vehicles.

Those smaller vehicles--the largest of which are about 3 1/2 feet wide, compared to 5 feet for the Electruck--are slower and less stable on an open road, although some can carry more cargo.

But like the Electruck, the vehicles don’t pollute the air and cost less to operate than gasoline-driven vehicles, the two big advantages the company emphasizes in selling them.

Taylor-Dunn was started in 1949 by an Anaheim farmer who developed an electric cart to use while feeding his chickens. It was bought two years ago by two electronics executives for an undisclosed price.

The private company now has about $25 million in annual sales and has what it says is a 60% chunk of the market for electric utility vehicles, a category that excludes recreational vehicles like golf carts.

The new owners have been looking for ways to sell more vehicles, and that’s where the Electruck comes in. Expanding customers’ choices by offering more roadworthy, powerful vehicles seemed like a good way to boost sales.

The company also expects to sell more vehicles because the federal Clean Air Act requires companies in smoggy cities like Los Angeles and San Diego to add cleaner vehicles to their fleets.

Eventually Taylor-Dunn wants to build working trucks that can travel on regular roads. One big obstacle is finding a place to recharge batteries.

The company says it will stay out of the potentially much-larger market for cars, the province of the big auto companies, which are trying to design practical, relatively inexpensive passenger vehicles.

“We’re in the truck business,” said Milton L. Sneller, chief operating officer and one of the two owners. “That’s not going to change.”

Two Electruck models, one with an open bed and one enclosed, will be introduced to the public Friday at an alternative transportation exhibition in Burbank.