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How to deal with this

gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
This is a pretty good customer of mine and recently they went through a name change of the company. They approached me to strip off the old graphics and reapply the new graphics. These are garbage trailers that transport garbage from here in Canada down to Michigan...( Thank you Michigan). It's obvious to me that these trailers never get washed much and they are like a mill finish aluminum. I turned the job down, as my shop is not large enough for these trailers and it is the sort of work I despise doing, so they got another vendor to take care of it. I know if I had done the job after stripping the old vinyl and trying to clean the trailer I would have been on the phone to let them know that the trailer needed to be buffed out or something before the new graphics were applied. Anyways the marketing guy is now asking me what to do. Why he would ask me is unclear...why not ask the company that did this? They are a good customer so I am trying to help them out. They actually acid washed the trailer and it looks like it blew a few letters off but the dirt remains...in fact it is more like the rear of the trailer when driven on the highway gets sandblasted by debris that gets sucked back on it.... I told him over time eventually it will even out but that is not the answer he wants.

What do you think can be done here?
 

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Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
Wait...am I seeing this correctly? The white is the old decal that was removed and the dark blue/black is the new one?

Can this be true? Is this a joke?
 
Signarama Jockey

Signarama Jockey

New Member
Notarealsignguy said:
That was pretty dumb. Whoever did it should have sold them on a decal so it'd cover up the ghosting. It doesn't take a PhD to know how this was gonna be the end result.
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Totally agree. If you're not going to paint it or buff it, putting cut letters on this is a waste.

It may fade out eventually, but how many years of sun and salt and grit is it going to take? And how many people are going to cringe at this truck while that happens?
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
So basically the rear of the trailer is from what I can gather, raw aluminum or mill finish.... I think the everything around the old copy basically got sandblasted and pitted from exposure... I was curious why the other company did not talk to the customer before installing the new copy. In any case I think it needs a good buffing to remove all the pitting before they do any more of these. The vinyl basically protected the surface over the years.
 
Boudica

Boudica

I'm here for Educational Purposes
gabagoo said:
This is a pretty good customer of mine and recently they went through a name change of the company. They approached me to strip off the old graphics and reapply the new graphics. These are garbage trailers that transport garbage from here in Canada down to Michigan...( Thank you Michigan). It's obvious to me that these trailers never get washed much and they are like a mill finish aluminum. I turned the job down, as my shop is not large enough for these trailers and it is the sort of work I despise doing, so they got another vendor to take care of it. I know if I had done the job after stripping the old vinyl and trying to clean the trailer I would have been on the phone to let them know that the trailer needed to be buffed out or something before the new graphics were applied. Anyways the marketing guy is now asking me what to do. Why he would ask me is unclear...why not ask the company that did this? They are a good customer so I am trying to help them out. They actually acid washed the trailer and it looks like it blew a few letters off but the dirt remains...in fact it is more like the rear of the trailer when driven on the highway gets sandblasted by debris that gets sucked back on it.... I told him over time eventually it will even out but that is not the answer he wants.

What do you think can be done here?
Click to expand...
This same thing happened here. A building supply company had been acquired, and the local place wanted us to quote new graphics. We did a crane for them before. So my boss quoted removal of all the old graphics and production and installation of new graphics. It was all pretty simple and basic. I guess the price was too high for them, and after a few months (they are right down the street) I started noticing the fleet vehicles with the new companies logos slapped right over the old ones. Ugly old stripes they had (which clashed horribly with the new brand) were still there. It's hideous, but not our problem.
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
Notarealsignguy said:
That was pretty dumb. Whoever did it should have sold them on a decal so it'd cover up the ghosting. It doesn't take a PhD to know how this was gonna be the end result.
Click to expand...
I don't even think that would apply very well on a surface like that, although it would look 100% better
 
Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
gabagoo said:
The white is the original finish of the aluminum.... so not white, just a mill finish
Click to expand...
It looks terrible. If I was that vendor I would NOT have applied those graphics no matter how much they were willing to pay me.

So, I'm not exactly sure what this truck looks like but I have put 3mm ACM on dumpster trucks in the past so we had a nice smooth surface to work with and they turned out really nice. Are you able to put a signboard on the side of these trucks to cover the entire area? You stated the surface is not very good for a wrap.
IMG_6170.jpeg
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
Stacey K said:
It looks terrible. If I was that vendor I would NOT have applied those graphics no matter how much they were willing to pay me.

So, I'm not exactly sure what this truck looks like but I have put 3mm ACM on dumpster trucks in the past so we had a nice smooth surface to work with and they turned out really nice. Are you able to put a signboard on the side of these trucks to cover the entire area? You stated the surface is not very good for a wrap. View attachment 170446
Click to expand...
That is actually a pretty good idea, but it is the rear door of the trailer.
 
Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
gabagoo said:
That is actually a pretty good idea, but it is the rear door of the trailer.
Click to expand...
I imagine it would still work, I did install a 2'x4' one on the rear of this after a few months.

Most trailers have those rubber things on the top of the door (if it's the kind that the door makes a ramp) so the panel won't actually touch the ground anyway.
 
B

Barker03

New Member
we have a customer with a similar situation. 8-9-year-old graphics once stripped left ghosting so was cheaper for us to wrap the entire panel than for them to respray. It was a white refrigerated box van so was just a large square panel that took about 5 to 10 min to wrap and then applied the new graphics on top. The box looked new again.
 
DL Signs

DL Signs

Never go against the family
Covering with an entire decal, wrap, or mounted panel like Stacy suggested are all good alternatives. Can't imagine what they were thinking by sending it back to the customer like that, without coming up with a better alternative. That looks like crap.

Depending on their budget, if you have any mobile dustless blasting services in the area, you could recommend the customer look into having them blasted before sending out for re-branding. Trailers, dumpsters, cars, boats, even wood & concrete come out clean, uniform, and paint/ vinyl ready. Semi trailers can be done in just a few hours each. Works like magic, uses glass beads & water, strips everything down to clean substrate, removes all paint, decals, vinyl, and gets rid of ghosting like that, all without warping anything...
 
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