Paint & Graphics
Most color schemes are monochromatic, but fleets are more likely to break that monotony
than owner-operators.
Tom Berg
Equipment Editor
What's your favorite color? Whatever it is, you probably don't paint your trucks that color, because the most popular pick for medium and heavy trucks is white. And that's way down the list of people's personal favorites.
If your favorite color is blue or red, you're monochromatically "with it," because those are the next most popular colors ordered by truck builders.
Blue, by the way, is this fall's hot color - even if it's actually cool - according to marketing organizations that track color trends around the globe for the apparel, home furnishings and automobile industries. Another top hue this fall will be brown, including tans and beiges, say the market researchers.
Truck manufacturers don't commission formal studies, but paint specialists do keep their trained eyes on what's popular in the auto and other businesses. Every year they change their official catalogs of available colors to reflect trends in the U.S. and elsewhere. Those palettes will include scores if not hundreds of colors, but the majority of orders are for a comparative few hues.
At Mack Trucks, for example, 38 to 40 colors cover 83% of all trucks ordered. Of those, Mack White is sprayed on the cabs and hoods of more than half (frames are usually black). The next most popular is Mack Red, then Medium Rich Blue.
At Peterbilt, about a third of their buyers specify white. International says about 40% of all customers order some shade of white, including most medium-truck customers. And International has 35 shades from which to choose, from yellowish off-white to a bright white that has a tinge of blue. But most buyers pick something in between.
Why is white so popular? Because it's practical: White is highly visible day or night, except in snow. White shrugs off dirt and can be striped and lettered like a sheet of white paper. It's acceptable to almost everybody, which boosts resale value and/or gets a truck resold faster. For all these reasons, white is also used on most van-type trailers and truck bodies.
Need we add that flames, intricate patterns and murals that are loved by their owner-creators aren't good bets at resale time?
White can be easily painted over, so it's a good color for dealer stock. Yet International dealers who stock fire trucks often order them in black because they claim that's actually easier to cover than white. Why not stock "fire engine red?" Because many fire departments have their own color schemes and while they often include red and white, some like 'em in lime-green or even dark green.
Fleets are more likely than anyone to order custom colors, especially in two or three tones, the builders say. Mack workers often find themselves opening cans of UPS brown, PennDOT Yellow, Omaha Orange (popular with municipal fleets) and the almost unique green-and-yellow of Air Products & Chemicals. Volvo stocks Yellow Freight Orange - a seeming contradiction partly explained in tradition. It seems that was Yellow Cab's original color and the founder of the taxi firm took it with him into the trucking business.
The Freightliner family, which includes Sterling and Western Star, catalogs Interstate Distributing Green (a rich metallic shade); Schneider National Orange (which dates back to founder Al Schneider's Allied Van Lines franchise); Penske Yellow (though the leasing organization has been ordering more trucks in white); and Conway Orange-and-White.
Although two or more passes through the booth are still required for more than one color, the process is less time consuming today because of adhesive masks. After the first coat is dry, workers place pre-cut masks on the panels in maybe a half hour. Some masks are perforated and after the second color is sprayed on, sections are peeled off to prepare for a third color.
In the old days, a talented guy spent several hours with masking tape and a ruler, and even after all that effort, the tape sometimes left ragged edges in paint that had to be cleaned up.
Probably nine out of 10 trucks are ordered in solid (non-metallic) colors, although that'll vary with the nameplate. For instance, many Peterbilt, Kenworth and Western Star buyers are owner-operators who prefer metallic shades. Either way, most trucks have a single color, which mirrors automotive trends. Two- and three-tone paint schemes for cars faded from their apex in the 1950s into monochrome treatment that now extends into bumpers. The three- and four-color schemes once so popular on heavy trucks of the 1970s and '80s are also long gone.
Multi-color paint looked good on high cab-over-engine vehicles, which are essentially big cubes with a lot of flat metal. Cabovers have all but disappeared from the highways as truckers flocked to conventionals after federal law made them workable length-wise. Conventionals have more interesting angles to break up visual monotony, so single colors look better on them. And a monotone road tractor just gives the appearance of being more aerodynamic than one with multiple colors.
Monotone is in with today's trucks mostly because they follow the fashion of automobiles. All manufacturers like single colors because they save time and money. For every color of paint on the vehicle, the body has to pass through a paint booth once. Some truck builders in the late '70s kept their paint booths going on extra shifts, running cabs and hoods through three and four times each, just to keep up with their assembly lines.
Some paints are more expensive than others. Yellows, oranges and reds are costly because their pigments have to be switched from relatively cheap compounds to more environmentally safe materials. And it takes more of those color paints to cover the primered metal and fiberglass panels of a truck. And the paint will be more fragile, too. Meanwhile, today's paints contain more pigments and fewer toxic solvents; solvents make paint flow well but aren't all that great for the environment.
Durable urethane enamels produced by Du Pont, PPG and Akzo Nobel are used by the truck builders under long-term supplier agreements. They say that base coat/clear coat paints are becoming more popular because the clear coat contains chemicals to protect the base color from fading due to the sun's ultraviolet rays or corrosive materials. Operators of concrete mixer trucks are enthusiastic about clear coating because it protects paint from acid-cleaning compounds needed to remove concrete residue. Builders say many freight fleets still spec base coat-only paint because it costs less, is easier to repair and stays shiny enough for the three or four years of fleet ownership.
Aggressive road salts - an increasingly hot topic in fleet managers' meetings - attack paint as well as the metals underneath them, truck builders say. Frames, being closest to splash and spray, tend to get the worst paint damage. Sand blasting and repainting are the low-tech repair remedy. Freightliner says it recommends undercoating cab undersides as a protection against magnesium- and calcium-chloride salts; it will spray on an asphalt-based compound right at the factory.
While human workers clad in protective suits and masks do specialty painting, robots do most of the spraying in booths today. Robots are programmed to hit the same pieces over and over with unerring precision, and without getting tired. Paint-booth robots go back 30 years or more. One seen by this writer in 1979 was run by a computer tape that had recorded the arm movements of the booth's best worker. The robot mimicked its human model all the way through the process, right up to a final extra squirt underneath a fender.
Graphics today are as likely to be pasted on as sprayed. Adhesive-backed vinyl sheeting can be quickly and cheaply produced by an artist on a personal computer. Dealers and fleet owners can order the materials and install them locally. From company lettering to fancy stripes and patterns, they can all be produced and installed by experienced specialists. Used-truck dealers often use colorful graphics to spice up an otherwise bland-white road tractor.
Out of fashion today are the once-popular reflective graphics, perhaps because they visually conflict with the mandatory white-and-red safety tape on tractors and semitrailers.
A final note on color trends: Builders say that show colors can influence what non-fleet buyers order. A guy will see a truck displayed at the Mid-America Trucking Show, for instance, and tell his hometown dealer he wants one just like it. Over the years the various manufacturers have featured reds, blues, whites, tans and even pinks, and some of them became popular. What will their 2006 show colors be?
They're not saying.
The editors thank these people for their help in preparing this article:
• Angela Plaxton, senior manufacturing development engineer, Freightliner Group
• Jerry Hodel, director of marketing product planning, and Bill Heffentrager, sales engineer, Mack Trucks
• LeRoy Brooks, corporate finishing manager, International Truck & Engine Corp.
• Jim Gossard, director of product development, Peterbilt Motors Co.
