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Advice needed on truck vinyl
Hi guys
I’ve had an enquiry to sign a fleet of artic lorries they would like a line about 1m high the full length of the trailer about 40ft then bend and go up one end to the top like a swish if you get what I mean and some text but im not to worried about the text its the long line how easy or would apa’s truck vinyl be suitable for this? I imagine it being hard to keep the line straight on something that’s so flexible. Any advice on this and a guide on how long it would take would help as I’ve not done any lorry curtain before.
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3 Replies
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sourcing the vinyl… Avery do one and you can buy it from Spandex or Robert Horne.
APA do one which is very popular and well priced,i havent used the Avery one but from memory, the adhesive is activated by water.
the APA one is very high tack on initial contact, so be prepaired if you havent worked with it before.when applying, its advised to crank the curtained very tight using their cranking straps / arms. this will give a decent rigid surface to apply to.
in the past with large logos we had one of our lads inside the truck with a 8×4 sheet of plywood pressing it up against the curtain. worked very well but means another body on the job. even take a young lad along to help with that and bung him a few quid. 😀
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I’ve only done one truck and used APA, the only down side if only doing one truck is you end up with a lot of spare vinyl as I think it was 25m min order and I had no alternative but to buy it, was hoping another order would come up but nothing as yet 😥
anyway my tip which I learned very quickly as had never used it before was don’t be deceived by it’s seemly lack of tack, it doesn’t feel very sticky at all but as Rob says once it touches it grabs on for dear life :lol1: My tip is to not squeegee too hard as even after you have tightened the curtain up as tight as you can when closer to the middle it will still bow on you so if you apply too much pressure it bows more and causes problems of "pre-grab" (I think I just made that term up) I found to squeegee firm but light (if such a think is possible 😉 ) to get it down nicely.
good luck
warren
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Would you do the 40ft length in one piece I’m worried asi line in up then start applying in by the time I get to the other end it’s not straight if I get this job the contract is for 70 artic trailers and the units so I want to make sure I allow enght time to fit the text won’t be that hard its the long line down the length of the curtain I’m thinking about 1 1/2 to 2 days dose that sound about right?
I’ve not heard good things about the avery truck vinyl but it might be easier to apply with water over the 40ft length than the apa which I’ve heard sticks like **** to a blanket.
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