Is it alright to.............................

[rossmosh]

"I'm re-doing a pylon sign for a landlord and they aren't working with me to get consent from their tenants to use their logos. Some of these tenants are big companies like Rite Aid and Dollar General. How do you normally handle this?" See how that is your actual question?

The answer is to contact the marketing departments of each company. You get their branding PDF document and ask if they will provide specific permission to proceed with the project. It will give you general guidelines on how the sign has to look to be within brand compliance and limit your liability. You may or may not need to submit it for final review to verify it's within brand compliance. They should let you know. Then you turn around and tack on the additional costs to the bill because the landlord didn't feel like helping in the process.

By doing what the landlord is suggesting you run the risk of making an out of compliance sign and breaking a potential exclusive contract Rite Aid has previously negotiated with another vendor. While you'd have every right to charge the landlord as you did the job as per their instruction, it would still reflect poorly on any professional sign shop. In this circumstance, I don't think you'd run the risk of getting in trouble with trademark or copyright infringement. It's down to brand compliance and whether Rite Aid gives you permission to fabricate the sign for them.

 

[signbrad]

Of course! I forgot about those large directory-type signs at strip malls and shopping centers. They are filled with the logos of the various tenant stores. The company I work for services a good number of these shopping centers, constantly changing the sign panels when tenants move in or out.

Both GaSouthpaw and rossmosh gave good answers to this.

As mentioned, the professional approach is to obtain branding guidelines. Our company asks for them and we offer to contact their Corporate to get them. If a franchisee or a shopping center management company is uncooperative, my employer's policy is to do the job anyway and make sure we get paid in a timely manner. If the retailer is contacted by their corporate headquarters because the logo is not perfect, we will re-do the sign at their expense. This is not the professional approach, in my opinion, but it's not my call.
Has a corporate headquarters ever contacted us directly whenever a logo has been incorrectly reproduced? Not to my knowledge. They have contacted the franchisee and instructed them to fix the logo.
..................

Business owner said, "We sell their product so it will be okay to use their logo."

rjssigns brings up a good point here.

In a case like this the company I work for simply makes the sign for the business owner in good faith. If the use of the logo constitutes infringement then the trademark owner, when they learn of it, will tell the infringer to remove it.
We have had this happen one time. We were not accused of wrongdoing, or even contacted by the trademark owner. The business owner was the infringer for displaying the logo without permission.

Here is a hypothetical example: a siding company thinks it would be a selling point to put the Alcoa logo on their signs since they use Alcoa aluminum products. So they order sign work with the Alcoa logo on it. Alcoa contacts the siding company and tells them they are not allowed to display the logo and to remove it. It's infringement.
Why does Alcoa not view this as free advertising?

Trademark protection is designed to prevent confusion among consumers. Alcoa may have no desire to be in the siding installation business, so the sign could give people the wrong impression.
And what if the siding company does shoddy work? The logo on the sign could conceivably tarnish Alcoa's reputation. So trademark protection can also serve to protect the good name of a brand. Further, if a siding customer is unhappy enough, they may decide to start a lawsuit, even naming Alcoa in the suit, since the Alcoa logo is on the sign.
So, Alcoa avoids this whole bundle of problems by simply not allowing their logo to be used on siding company signs. They may feel that what little advertising the sign gives them is not worth it.