Grayton Plumbing in Washington, D.C. doesn’t own a fleet of 20 trucks – it just seems that way. That visual sleight-of-hand is a testament to the power of effective branding, says owner Frankey Grayton, whose picture appears on the back of his company’s six service vehicles.

“The trucks are, for the most part, identical,” says Grayton. The Dodge Sprinter 3500 chassis carries Hackney box bodies. Vinyl wraps show a large yellow smiley face with a bright-red monkey wrench, plus the company’s phone number, Web address and slogan, all on a watery, aqua-blue background.

They’re everywhere

“Six identical trucks moving throughout the city give the impression that we have more trucks than we actually own,” says Grayton. “People tell me they saw a truck on the south side and another on the west side, but they don’t realize that in most cases, they saw the same truck.”

Before the vinyl wraps, the business had no name recognition. So Grayton contacted SignZoo in Sarasota, Fla. “I wanted to clearly distinguish us from anything else in the market, and we got that,” Grayton says. “Now I’m known throughout the city as the guy with his picture on the back of his trucks.

“When we get service calls, we ask everyone how they heard about our company. The vinyl wraps doubled the calls generated by our trucks. We went from not being recognized at all to very high recognition, all because of the trucks.”

Grayton talks with other plumbers and drain cleaners about the value of highly visible trucks. Their excitement about the concept usually disappears when they hear the price tag. “Sometimes, small businesses don’t have big-business mentality,” he says. “Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you have to think small. Whether you run a fleet of two or 20 vehicles, they need to be identical. It’s all part of branding.”

Time savers

The trucks do more than just market the company: They save technicians significant time because they carry everything required for a job. “We don’t spend a lot of time running back and forth for materials,” Grayton says. “Once a supplier asked me what was wrong with our business because he rarely saw my guys anymore.

“If we can knock out an average call without leaving the property, that adds value for homeowners because we’re not wasting their time, either. Our customer surveys show they really like that.”

Each truck carries a RIDGID K-1500 sectional drain machine for larger jobs and a K-50 for bathtubs and sinks. Half the trucks also carry RIDGID K-60s, designed for 1-1/2- to 4-inch drain lines. The trucks also have identical coded storage bins that make spare-part inventory tracking as easy as the vehicles are visible. All 20, er, six of them.