Grupo Logístico Arnedo is the leading national transportation company in Spain. With printed SolidskinTec side curtains fitted by Toldos Urca, their fleet of 240 trucks is protected against the harsh Spanish sun and dusty roads. The dirt-repellent characteristics of the tarpaulins also mean that the company can reduce the cleaning program of the side curtains.
Lorries are very large and move through the traffic. That’s why you should try to limit the message to its core. For example, a phone number is more complex to remember than a website or company name. Make a clear decision when it comes to the aim of your message. Is increasing brand recognition more critical, or are you trying to bring a message to the public’s attention?
Ratchet straps and the compulsory reflective stripes disrupt the image space and are more susceptible to damage. Therefore, considering this in your truck side curtains design is a good idea. The buckles can tear or come loose on a journey or might not have been closed properly, and the straps might then rub the curtain, causing visible damage. To prevent this kind of mechanical damage to the image, the manufacturer of the side curtain can design the lower part of the full-color image with a strip of colored canvas. It is, therefore, advisable to have as little imagery as possible in this strip or to consciously include the strip in the design.
A so-called weather strip of about 10 cm is added to the top of the truck side curtains to prevent rainwater from coming in. This fixed part of the trailer covers the opening between the rails and the curtain side. You should allow for a reduction in the image size due to this strip. If the strip is made partially or entirely made of a hard synthetic material, it will cut the full-color curtain side like a knife whenever the curtain is opened or closed. This could damage the image after a while. To prevent this, a dark PVC strip can be welded to the curtain side. This strip is cut without it being noticeable, preventing this from happening to the actual curtain. Ask the manufacturer of your curtain for the well-known details about this.
Standard truck side curtains are only available in conventional bodywork colors, but it’s the combination of an iconic lorry and trailer color that can create a personal and signature style. The SolidskinTec printing process provides a unique degree of gloss. This gloss ensures that the shine on the side curtain is the same as that of metallic bodywork. Our printers are capable of matching any color standard, including automotive paints. The matching colors of the printed truck side curtains and the color of the cabins make for a unique and impressive identifying image. With a truck side curtain printed with SolidskinTec, you are sure the color match will stay accurate for over 5 years.
Producing printed truck side curtains is more than simply printing. The SolidskinTec printing process has been specially developed to enhance the image and protect its appearance. Through our process, colors seem much more intense, and shades of black are much richer due to our polyurethane fusing process. When preparing an image, shades of black must be ‘rich black.’ Bearing in mind the intensifying effect, it is also essential to make the middle tints lighter to increase the contrast.
The technical textiles we use are standard grey on the inside. This is a deliberate choice; the dirt from intensive use is less visible or not visible at all, and the contours of the load can’t be seen when light shines from the side (block-out effect). An additional advantage is that the color intensity of the actual image on the truck side curtains is much greater.
A fact sometimes forgotten is that the direction you drive affects the design. Despite it being easy to apply the same design on both sides of the truck side curtains, in practice, we see that this only works with a centered layout. It’s always worth at least mirroring the design per side and taking a good look at the whole image story.
Although the resolution isn’t an issue in the case of a vector design, it can prove to be a challenge for pixel designs on large surfaces. Our printers can process a resolution of 600 dpi, which sometimes makes files extremely large. Our printing software adjusts for this, which means that (with the correct conversion of files) we can work with images as low as 250 dpi at 100% and still achieve a perfect result.
So, you should ensure that the images in the design have this resolution or higher. It is, therefore, sometimes necessary to enlarge the image beforehand. If this enlargement is over 150% of the original image, we advise you to put ‘noise’ or ‘grain’ over the image. This increases the varnishing effect described in photography.
