Lee Henry had been in the business of making road calls for tractor trailers for a decade before inspiration first hit.
An ex-military man, Henry wanted to show his support for fallen troops and realized he had the perfect canvas: one of his trucks. He helped design a custom wrap that read: “You’re not forgotten.”
Then, in the midst of the recession and feeling “like America is kind of down,” Henry decided to turn another service truck into a tribute to some of the country’s brightest icons. He called it the “American Truck” and designed a wrap that featured Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and Elvis Presley, their images superimposed over a worn-looking American flag.
Responses came quickly. People were noticing the trucks on the street — and taking more notice of Henry’s company, AM/PM Road Service, which serves Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Memphis and Nashville, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala.
“I get a lot of compliments on the trucks,” he said. “Even if I’m talking to somebody they’ll say: ‘Oh, you’re the owner of AM/PM — I see you on the freeways all the time.’”
And while Henry said he was one of the first in his region to take a shine toward custom design on service trucks, it’s a trend that’s picking up traction across the U.S. and Canada.
Offering an edge on the competition
Companies that specialize in custom wraps say more fleet operators are starting to see eye-catching trucks as a way to express their firms’ identities. Plus, in a competitive market it’s a way to get an edge up on the competition — often at a smaller cost than some traditional forms of advertising.
Malcolm Gieske, owner of the Slatington, Penn.-based Identity Group, designs wraps for Knapheide service bodies, among other vehicles. He said that while traditional billboard advertising in the U.S. can cost an average of $2,000 a month, a wrap that lasts for an average of five to seven years comes with a far cheaper price tag.
“If you really break down the cost per truck, it adds up to less than $50 per month,” Gieske said. “That’s very cheap advertising when you can have 10,000 people seeing it per day.”
And for many companies, it’s become a key way of communicating.
James Flessas, sales manager at Ads on Wheels in Merrimack, N.H., said the days of putting a simple decal on your truck are gone – at least in some markets.
“It used to be everyone had some decal lettering on work trucks or vans, and now the competition is coming out with these huge vehicle wraps that everyone sees,” Flessas said. “And no one is paying attention to the decals — everyone is staring at the wraps.”
Ads on Wheels deals with customers from across the country, doing most of its business by phone and email, he said. Some people come in seeking design help with very basic ideas, while others have more elaborate plans.
“Sometimes they’ll even say they want something totally out of the box – they want a character, or they want everything to be cartoons and for us to create a mascot,” he said.
Other customers have requested 3D-style designs, like truck wraps that appear to show what’s inside the vehicle.
“We’ll put everything in a mockup and do it on a template of whatever vehicle we have,” Flessas said. “It’s like a blueprint or sketch drawing of the vehicle, and we’ll keep going back and forth, making changes and adjusting things.”
It’s fun to be creative
Henry, who started with the two patriotic trucks, continued branching out with his ideas. He now has a half-dozen service trucks with specialty designs. Two have military themes, one has a “Soul Train” motif and another catches attention with orange, white and red flames printed on it.
He’s had plenty of fun with getting creative. One truck, used primarily by an employee who did diagnostic work by computer, is known as the “alien truck.”
“It has an alien holding a laptop, and instead of his name, it says ‘AM/PM,’” Henry said. “And it’s got a stethoscope going to the front of the truck. It grabs a lot of attention.”
In addition to all that attention on the road, Henry said his custom-wrapped trucks have had an unexpected impact on his staff. Put employees in a good-looking truck, he said, and they do a better job of keeping it in good condition. Plus, he sees them as a recruiting tool for new technicians.
“It gives the guys some pride,” Henry said. “They want to take care of the trucks; if they have a wrap truck, they’re going to keep it organized and clean.”
Wraps also provide protection
Opting for wraps also helps protect service trucks from the typical wear and tear of the road.
Flessas said the wraps his company offers, which are made by 3M, come with a seven-year warranty from peeling, bubbling or fading. He said most customers keep them on about that length of time, although some can last for a decade or longer.
“One of the benefits is that it’s protected from all the elements; the snow, the salt, the sun, the rocks and dirt, that no longer happens all that,” he said. “With an adhesive wrap, a lot of the times one of the hidden benefits is when you take the wrap off someday your paint hasn’t even seen the light of day for eight years.”
Gieske said companies have also realized that it’s a way to show some creativity without dropping the resale value of a truck.
“If a fleet manager likes to have a unique color on their vehicles and they’re getting it painted all the time, now they have an unusual color they have to sell,” he said. “With a wrap, you take it off and you have a white truck again.”
Henry said he takes pride in having what he deems “the best-looking service trucks out there in Georgia.”
And he believes that when that unusual truck with the American flag — or Elvis’s face or an alien with a laptop — comes rumbling along, it might give his customers a bit of confidence, too.
“When they’re broke down out there on the side of the road, they want to see that the guy that came out there is equipped, and that he’s got a nice-looking truck — that it’s a professional road service,” he said.
Erin Golden is a journalist based in Minneapolis.