Should You Paint Your Lawn Care Trucks?

Hey everyone, Mike Gandies here with landscape business course. I am actually waiting for someone just at the bank, not too far from here. Mike, just pull up in my car and I wanted to talk to you guys actually about that color right there, yellow. Why we painted our trucks yellow and whether or not you should paint your trucks yellow or some other color. And so first off, why do we paint our trucks yellow? Alright, so the main thing is this, when we painted, so we tested it, we did a couple of our trucks yellow and we started to like, just listen to the consumer in terms of what trucks were they mentioning. And a lot of times they'd say, oh yeah, I see you all the time in your yellow truck. And we literally knew 10% of our trucks were yellow and yet most of our calls were like, oh yeah, I see you guys in the yellow truck all the time with the dog. And it's that branding. That's why you would have a yellow truck, that's why you would have a, you know, color of your truck. Now would if you asked me like, hey, would you, you paint your truck yellow again? I don't know, like I don't know if I'd paint yellow because if yellow works to stand out from all the other white trucks, like what about pink? What about violet? What about some crazy other color that would really make you stand out? I start to think about that. Right. And so first off, should you paint your trucks yellow? They're gonna cost, usually it's gonna cost you between, you know, $700 and $1500 to paint your trucks a color like at Mako or most any auto body shop will be painting as well. And so it's usually gonna cost you about that much money. And the question is, okay, is that a marketing expense? Yeah, it is, because people are going to recognize you a lot more and it's gonna become part of your branding. If you make your logo around it, your trucks are in your marketing material, in your advertising, in your social media. And so people start to attribute and you a lot more to the brand, the color of the trucks. And so we've just seen it time and time again where people remember us by the yellow trucks. And I've seen companies that have like pink trucks or some crazy color and they'll have two or three trucks and yet people again will say they see them all over the place. The reason is because different and it makes people trigger their mind. Like if you see a bunch of white trucks, like you see them all just over the place. And so literally just a Few of your painted trucks in your small town, your city, especially if they're a tight route, people are gonna think you're everywhere and think you're a lot bigger than you and they're gonna remember you by the brand that is the colors, the logo. People do not remember Augusta Lawncare. They don't. They do not remember the name. They remember yellow truck and the dog. That's all they remember. And that's what branding is. And so the more you can focus on branding instead of paying dollars for ads, the better. We don't spend a whole lot of money on our ads. Once a gust of location has been established for a long time, they have a lot of trucks rolling around because the branding is the long term game that doesn't require you to pay and pay for every single click, every single call, every single lead. And that's where you want to be at long term. It's not an overnight strategy. It costs a lot of money to, by the time we do our painting and the decals on the vehicles, we're looking at 15, $1600 at least for us to paint and put the decals on. But that 15, $1600, you know, in the immediate, if I spent $1500 on marketing tomorrow on ads, yeah, I'd get a lot leads in the short term. But when that $1,500 is spent on leads and it's done, that's it, I gotta go spend more money on getting more leads. Whereas with painting a truck and branding, you don't have to keep paint. It's, it's like in perpetuity, you pay that fifteen hundred dollars at sixteen hundred dollars, paint the truck, get the decals on there. And that thing should be sending you leads consistently. Like people remember seeing your pink truck or your green truck every single week, their neighborhood, they'll remember that. They'll remember you as the green truck or the pink truck or the red truck. They will not remember the name unless your name is the branding, which if you get a really catchy, funny kind of cheeky name, sometimes that will work. They'll remember the name, but it's usually the color of your truck or some sort of branding play that you're doing. And again, the name can be the branding play. And another reason why we painted our trucks is I can make a truck that is a poor color, like a maroon or scratched up, a little dented. Once it's painted, it looks like brand new. And so I might be able to get two or three thousand dollars off of the truck price. When I buy it, but then go paint it and it look brand new. So it makes up for itself in terms of cost as well. Because I can make a truck that is $3,000 less in price due to scratched up paint, few little dense dings and maybe a bad paint color and that no one wants on the retail market. I can just go take that, paint it and look brand new. No one ever knows that it was scratched. No one ever knows that it was a weird color. It had a little bit of rust on it. So that's why we do, we do paint our trucks. Do I think you should paint yours? Yes, I do. I think it should be a different color. A couple reasons why I would not recommend yellow. Number one, because Augusta is going to be coming probably pretty close to you one day and we will win the branding game of yellow trucks. That's more of a joke. But.

To be honest, I would say if you should paint your trucks is if you want the long term branding to outweigh the short term leads. There are some people who do not want more leads. They don't want people calling them. They get annoyed when people call them for new work in their neighborhood and the neighbors call them and like, yeah, when you brand yourself and you put your phone number on all your trucks, yeah, people can call you if they don't like your driving, if they don't like your work, if they think you cut them off, they can literally look at your truck and call you. And so some people don't even want to paint their trucks. They don't even want to have a brand. They want to fly under the radar and that's fine. They don't want to grow their business. But if you're looking for long term growth and branding where you're not paying for leads, every single customer you're have to pay for for Google Ads or Facebook ads or some other, you know, next door home advisor, whatever else people pay for to get leads. If you don't want that to be a constant thing that you're doing, branding is where you want to be at. It's a long term play. I know it's not cheap. If I spent, if I had 10 trucks, I had to paint them all. I'm looking at, you know, a solid 18 grand probably at least to paint all of Those, decal them. 18 grand spent today will probably have better ROI in terms of ads in the next year or two. Get more leads, get more customers, get more revenue in the short term. But when that money spent, I gotta go keep spending that money. Whereas that truck, that vehicle, once it's branded, keeps giving you leads. Keeps giving you leads. And people remember you more. They'll think you're bigger because they'll see you. They'll notice you a lot more as well. So keep that in mind. Why I wouldn't choose yellow, because the gust is coming next to you. And number two, don't just do something because you hear me say it or anyone else say it. Go test it. Go take one of your trucks, paint it purple. See what happens. Maybe it's your estimate truck, paint the thing purple. Maybe it's your ugliest truck. Go paint that thing purple. Or some other color that maybe jives an orange. Orange works. People aren't gonna miss orange. You can even chalk it up as a safety measure. People aren't gonna miss that. They're gonna notice it. They're going to recognize you, and they're going to have recognition around your brand. And so go test it out. Don't just take what someone says. Me or any other YouTuber or someone that does landscaping and makes videos. Don't just take our word for it. Like, go test it. Figure it out yourself. See if it works. See if it's something you want to do long term. So anyways, just wanted to share that with you. Hope that helps. Have a great day. I'm Mike Andy's Land eight business courses.