Sign Installation: The right reach

by all | 19 May 2016 11:33 am

By Peter Saunders
Vans and trucks equipped with aerial work platforms or ladders for outdoor sign installations range in length, height, capacity, reach and material handling options. As such, a sign shop’s choice of model—or reliance on non-vehicular installation systems, such as scissor lifts—will depend on its specific needs in the field.

Versatile vehicles
The sign industry has seen rapid technological developments over the past few decades, from piezoelectric inkjet printing to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to digital billboards. While sign installation equipment may not appear to have changed as quickly, it has needed to adapt to outside forces. Like LEDs versus neon and fluorescent lighting, for example, it has become less energy-intensive.

“Everyone is looking for more efficient ways to install and service signs,” says Mike Bradley, vice-president (VP) of Radocy, which has supplied telescopic cranes to the sign industry for more than 50 years. “Our cranes operate off of 110-V alternating current (AC) power, so we aren’t using the truck’s diesel to power our lifts, which would cause unneeded war and tear on the engine and transmission. By running the cranes off of a generator, power inverter, shore power or any combination thereof, we prolong the life of the truck, save on maintenance and fuel costs and cause less pollution.”

Another way to save money is to lower the overhead costs involved in sign installation. Radocy has built cranes to fit on trucks that do not require any special licence to drive, but still offer sufficient carrying capacity. This way, sign companies can avoid needing a full trailer or two trucks for the same job.

“They are also looking for cranes with heavy lifting capacity at lower angles and that have shorter retracted boom lengths,” says Bradley. “One of the biggest changes in the industry has been lower signs. Since most signs today aren’t installed above 14 m (45 ft), there is usually very little need for 30.5-m (100-ft) cranes.”

Fortunately, a broad range of sizes have become available, in terms of both the vehicles and the installation equipment mounted to them.

“Aerial work platforms on compact vehicles with a short wheelbase have become popular because installers need a small footprint when they’re working near buildings and in parking lots with lots of cars around them,” says Mick Gerber, an account manager for Scott Powerline & Utility Equipment, which sells and rents out Elliott Equipment aerial platforms, boom trucks and cranes to the sign industry in Canada and the U.S. “There are both midsized and smaller-chassis trucks available. And in many cases, you can use a light-duty setup instead of
a heavy-duty one.”

Scott Powerline’s material handling systems typically have enough capacity to lift 227 kg (500 lb), but larger units are also available to support up to 454 kg (1,000 lb).

“Beyond that, you’ll need two trucks for the job,” says Gerber. “When installing signs, though, reach is usually the biggest factor. For anything above 19 m (63 ft), you’ll need a midsize to large chassis.

Evolving needs
Reflecting the flexibility needed to handle a broad variety of jobs, sign companies may own and/or rent equipment to meet changing demands.

“We find sign companies typically start with renting,” says Radocy’s Bradley. “When their yearly costs increase, then they start to look at leasing or buying.”

“Some sign project management companies, like Media Resources in Oakville, Ont., own all of their trucks,” says Scott Powerline’s Gerber, “but many more sign companies subcontract out their installation work. It’s a question of capital expenditure. If you only rent, there may be times when availability is slim, which can be a problem.”

“We find there are mainly two types of companies,” says Dennis Hansen, co-owner of Van Ladder, which started out serving telephone utility companies in 1968, before branching into the sign industry. “There are those that do their own installations and have a dedicated bucket truck and a full-time trained and certified driver. Then there are those that focus more on manufacturing signs and only use smaller service vehicles, which is where we come in.”

As its name suggests, Van Ladder manufactures energy-efficient single-operator aerial buckets that can be mounted to midsized service vehicles. They offer 360-degree rotation, a working height of 14 m (45 ft) and side reach of 9 m (29 ft), which is suitable for many regional sign maintenance providers’ typical day-to-day needs.

Chris’s Sign Service, for example, has upgraded its fleet in recent years from vans with 10-m (34-ft) aerial ladders to the 14-m Van Ladder line, which meets most of its needs for retrofitting, servicing and maintaining electric signs in British Columbia.

“We’ve slowly replaced our shorter lifts with the longer-reach products,” says Kevin Balzer, general manager (GM). “Today’s lifts are aluminum, which makes them lighter, so we can more easily put a longer-reach ladder on our vans, without needing outriggers; this speeds up service time and, in turn, saves money for the customer. For one of our recent jobs, we had to rent a truck-mounted crane to install a heavy Best Buy sign, but we were then able to reach it with our regular ladders. And nearly 98 per cent of our work these days is maintenance, which we can handle with the ladders. We rarely need to rent a lift to reach any higher for a job.”

No universal lift
Toronto Sign Services, which specializes in installing wide-format printed vinyl graphics, also uses scissor and boom lifts, but can eschew trucks due to the nature of its work.

“We almost never deal with electrical signage, so trucks are not useful to what we do,” says Alex Severin, owner. “We use scissor lifts about 80 per cent of the time. In other cases, we use articulating and telescoping boom lifts. And we rarely need more than one at a time for a job.”

Given the variety of models of lifts needed for different jobs, Toronto Sign Services rents them, rather than buying.

“There is no ‘universal’ lift we could use,” Severin explains. “Some companies can buy
a scissor lift that will accommodate about 70 per cent of their work, but we rent because we need something different for every job, based on where we’re working.”

Indeed, Toronto Sign Services starts with detailed information about an installation job—including a site survey, height measurements, access details and photos from the client—before determining which equipment to rent for the occasion.

“Given I’ll be working on the equipment, I need to make sure I’ll be comfortable and safe,” says Severin, who recently became the first Canadian graphics installer to be master-certified by the Professional Decal Application Alliance (PDAA), part of the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association (SGIA). “We wrapped a passenger jet worth millions of dollars, for example, so we couldn’t cut graphics on it—they all had to be pre-cut—and we needed an extended platform to get to hard-to-reach areas.”

Another benefit of renting lifts is avoiding liability issues. When Severin shows up for a job, the equipment has already been dropped off by the supplier, so he is not responsible for bringing it to the work site without damaging anything around it.

Larger as needed
AIP Media, based in nearby Mississauga, Ont., owns six Dodge Caravans and a scissor lift, but only rents boom trucks on an as-needed basis.

“The site inspections determine whether they’re needed,” explains Tony Iacobelli, owner. “The scissor lift’s height is sufficient for most of our jobs, we can bring in scaffolding and each of our vans is like a little hardware store, filled with the tools for a variety of jobs, but sometimes we really need an articulating boom to get past an obstruction.”

To promote Toronto’s 2015 Pan American (Pan Am) Games, for instance, AIP rented 37-m (120-ft) long booms for outdoor graphic installations across the city. In another example, a crane with a basket was called for when installing a sign 61 m (200 ft) up a former elevator test shaft in Toronto that had been acquired by a kitchen company and was being rebranded.

“It took five minutes just to get up there,” says Iacobelli, “and then the installer needed a radio to communicate back and forth with the crane operator.”

And in some cases, even a crane is not sufficient. AIP made its name in the industry back in 2009, when Iacobelli and his team installed a building wrap 122 m (400 ft) up Vancouver’s Royal Centre. Given this context, they had to work from a window washers’ swing stage. The 4,831-m² (52,000-sf) wrap still holds the title as the single biggest vinyl graphic ever installed in Canada.

With files from Radocy, Scott Powerline & Utility Equipment, Van Ladder, Chris’s Sign Service, Toronto Sign Services and AIP Media. For more information, visit www.radocy.com[1], www.scottpowerline.com[2], www.vanladder.com[3], www.chrissigns.com[4], www.torontosignservices.com[5] and www.aip-media.com[6].

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/sign-installation-the-right-reach/

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