Choosing Your Commercial Fleet's Color

If you're starting a new company that needs a fleet of vehicles, you know those need to have identical colors and designs. Yet you don't have to conform to other fleets and use only certain colors -- there's no one vehicle paint color that determines if the vehicle is part of a commercial fleet. Yet choosing a color can be more difficult than you'd think. Ask yourself where your company stands on the following and then see what colors in those ranges you might prefer.

You Want the Logo to Stand Out

If it's important to you to have a logo that's easy for people to see (because those people are potential customers), white is probably your best bet for a vehicle color. As the car or truck goes zipping by, a white base will provide a light, nonintrusive background that highlights the logo. While there are other contrasting color pairs that you could use, you have to take the motion of the car into account, and white is one of the better base colors for that, especially at night.

You Want the Vehicles to Stand Out

Of course, if a logo isn't an issue, but you want your fleet to really stand out from others, then you want to look at unusual or bright base colors. Red and yellow are options, but you can also go for colors like purple. These work best if the vehicles themselves are distinct enough to stand out. For example, people are used to seeing white tow trucks, so a fleet of red tow trucks would definitely stand out.

You Want to Save Money

But getting too flashy could cost you. If you want to save money on repainting when you buy new vehicles or repair older ones, a single color is better than two-tone paint jobs. That's just simple economics because the more elaborate the job, the more it's going to cost.

You Want General Conformity

Paint colors for vehicles can change ever so slightly each year. What counts as dark green one year might change slightly the next as manufacturers make different shades available. Basicv colors like white and black are likely to be the easiest to match if the exact paint shades on the older vehicles in the fleet are no longer available.

You Want to Sell the Vehicles When You Retire Them

Remember that as the vehicles get older and need to be retired, you might want to sell them to buyers looking for a bargain vehicle. However, the more normal the paint job, the more likely you are to find buyers. Bright traffic-cone orange, for example, is not a car color that many people would want to buy, at least not for a high price.

The manufacturer of the vehicles you're buying should be able to provide you with paint samples of all the shades available, and you can see which would match best with your industry and desires according to the previous points. Once you get your fleet up and running, your company will be associated with the vehicle color you choose, so start considering these issues now. Contact a fleet servicer, like Florida Truck & Trailer CO, for more help.

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