HGV presentation: How, who and why?

[Davie]

Afternoon,

Just something that I've found myself wondering about as I drive along but amongst the sea of rather tired looking supermarket wagons, rough looking tippers and ruined fuel tankers, it seems there are a lot of seriously well presented trucks running about. Now, I get the owner / driver thing, if it was yours then yes you'd perhaps want to look after it and bling it up however it's the company owned stuff that I'm referring to.

There's a few, what I assume are fleet / company owned artic lorries running around here that look immaculate... as in properly mint, arches spotless, chrome that looks like a mirror and tyres dressed and so on. So my question (we;ll get there!) is who does this and how and why? Is it a case of X company truck is driven daily by a driver who takes extreme lengths to keep it as mint as possible and if so, then where and how does this happen... as opposed to Y company truck that is driven by somebody who doesn't care?

So from a driver point of view and a company... what's the story? Is this a driver choice and thus it's all on him or do some companies promote this sort of presentation and support it? A few "local" ones that spring to mind are Olivers Transport wagons, Dyce Carriers and Calum Plank car carrier's wagons... not only have I never seen a dirty one but there's a few that are borderline concours or so it seems.

Cheers

[WilliamWoollard]

I've never understood this either, there's a company near me that has customised trucks, they look great but I can't get my head around how viable it is. Presumably their customers pay more for their stuff to be hauled around by a fancy truck?
https://www.facebook.com/ColesandSons/videos/14906...

[Davie]

Indeed, but even taking the properly customised "show" trucks out the equation (though I gather some of those work daily!) it's how companies / drivers manage to keep even more run of the mill stuff looking so good, more so at this time of year. It's actually rather impressive.

[fttm]

We don"t run custom trucks but they do have some "bling" , moose bars alloy wheels and tanks stacks and lights etc , fairly standard stuff here .Truckwash accounts in every major city so they usually get washed twice a week on average , Good for the company image , plus we like driving smart equipment , also we tend to be ignored by the dept of highways officers due to presentation and our safety record .

[Nickyboy]

It's partly passion of the owner/driver, they may have started with one truck that they customised before moving on to running a small fleet, you won't find a large fleet like that, they might be smart but rarely customised.

It's also recognition, people remember a custom truck, a big contract will be on price but a small company who wants their stuff moving might see their trucks on the road or at a show and talk to them about doing work.

The company mentioned above has been on the show scene for years and manufacture their own custom parts and have made a business out of it. A lot of the show trucks across Europe have parts made by them.

Their flagship truck V8GNC had a nut and bolt rebuild a few years back, it's won awards every year across Europe



The Scandinavians put this country to shame however.

[Davie]

I get that, ie understand that show trucks and customised stuff is a great way on generating interest > business but I'm meaning the more run of the mill trucks that seem to work day in, day out but whilst not customised in that way, are still incredibly clean and well presented... is that down to the driver taking pride / investing his own time to keep the truck clean or do some of the fleet operators encourage that sort of thing both financially and in terms of the time it must take? The truck that prompted this was an Olivers livestock wagon... in fact two of them... one a rather hard worked Scania that looked like any other truck and the next I passed was I think a Volvo, utterly mint (yet not new) and thus that made me wonder why some trucks are immaculate yet others in the fleet... less so.

[grumpy52]

Driver pride is the underlying reason . Many will spend upto a couple of weeks at a time in their trucks so get a bit "house proud " .
A company that I worked for in the past gained their biggest contract when one of their wagons was spotted at a customers .
They all had extra lights , stack exhausts, stainless wheeltrims and were always clean. These rigs can be north of £200k to put on the road for a top of the range model +fridge box trailer , they do deteriorate quickly if not looked after given the miles that they do every week .
Also on certain work it is required that they are washed out after every delivery.

Also as others mentioned the authorities tend to bypass the immaculate looking wagons .
The fact that they all ran bent as far as ?rivers hours and speed limits was bye the bye !

Edited by grumpy52 on Sunday 24th March 16:15

[G13NVL]

A lot of these drivers are trampers and that cab is their home. When I did it we could be away for maybe weeks at a time so would always want it as clean as possible. Some lads weren’t to bothered some (like myself) liked to keep all the chrome polished, tyre shine on etc I just liked it like that like I do my own car plus something to pass the days sitting around waiting on next jobs! Always nice getting a compliment on your truck when rocking up to a new site as sad as it may be ha!

[DanT86]

First post but what he said.

At my place most of the trucks are double and triple shifted but mine and a few others are only driven by the one driver (unless on holiday)

Most are an absolute tip but mine and the other trucks with only one driver are kept spotless. It shows a sence of pride and also who wants to be sitting in a pig sty all day. It's my office and I spend all day there.

[grumpy52]

More and more companies advertising for drivers are now including a brief description of the kit that the company runs , many also pay bonuses for keeping the trucks clean and undamaged, fuel economy bonuses etc .

[loggo]

A lot of lorries in large company Liveries are nevertheless owned buy a driver who contracts to the large company. Part of the contract agreement is that the vehicle is presented in company livery. I am thinking of most of the major quarries, container fleets etc. Hence a vehicle that seems to be just another one of hundreds may well be blinged up as it is the only vehicle the driver owns

[smifffymoto]

I have worked for some reasonably sized companies, James Irlam,Jack Richards on day shift.
Many times I complained about dirty,filthy trucks.The usual response was that a dirty truck earns the same as a clean truck.Also the drivers that spent most of Saturday cleaning their truck were the arselicking company men.