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Big Red Truck to brush aside painting contractor problems
By Sheila Watson
Contributing Writer
Pratt & Lambert Paints of Cleveland, Ohio, has selected Charleston as the exclusive test market for a new customer service concept: taking the paint store to the job site.
Lord & Evans Paints of Charleston is the first paint distributor in the country to have access to the Big Red Truck, a mobile paint shop and showroom provided by Pratt & Lambert.
The truck will carry color computers, tinting machines, paint shakers and a storage area for paint and applicator tools and sundries—all designed to offer recommendations, match colors and deliver products on site.
“The mobile paint shop is an extension of our commitment to offer our customers the highest level of service available in the industry,” said Steve Wray, president of Lord & Evans. “It is a wonderful way to provide an instant response and real-time problem-solving capability at the customer’s convenience.”
As Pratt & Lambert’s largest independent distributor, Lord & Evans was a natural selection to launch the program, according to Mike Smith, Pratt & Lambert’s national dealer sales director.
“We are confident the Big Red Truck will be another Lord & Evans success story,” Wray said.
Lord & Evans is committed to the promotion, which began in February, for at least six months. The end result, he said, is “open-ended. This is the test market, so they (Pratt & Lambert) will be judging the performance of the truck as well as our comments on how this works.”
So far, the response has been positive, Wray said.
“This has had a tremendous impact on customers who’ve had problems with their painting,” he said. “In some cases, it’s as simple as a color match. Historically, what happened was you had to try to match the color on the job.”
The standard process is typically a hit or miss, with a salesman trying to determine colors on the job site and then going back to the shop to match the color, Wray said.
“This truck has been a godsend for us, allowing us to take a paint lab to a plant or an office or a builder’s job site and be able to match colors and make product recommendations on site.”
The process of matching the color takes trained professionals, Wray said. One of the professionals on the truck is a color expert provided by Pratt & Lambert.
“Sometimes it takes a bit of tweaking by someone who has been trained, but it’s still a fairly instantaneous process,” he said. “When we’re there with the truck, we’re speeding up the process by hours if not days.”
The mobile paint store is intended for the professional end user.
“We see this as being helpful for the painting contractor or the manufacturing facility with industrial maintenance requirements or an institution that needs a lower odor, such as a hospital. You won’t see this truck coming through your neighborhood on Saturday mornings,” Wray said.
Lord & Evans is targeting certain markets as well as particular customers it wants to address.
“With the truck, if we’re not helping solve painting dilemmas, we’re actively pursuing business or firming up business,” he said. “So for us, the truck is both a marketing tool and a problem solver.”
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