Pacific Truck Colors, which began as an offshoot of a Portland OR utility equipment distributor, now has a 27,000-sq-ft shop in the Portland suburb of Tualatin.
THE paint department, for some companies a production bottleneck or a regulatory compliance challenge, can also be a valuable revenue stream.
That has been the case for Roy Goecks, a veteran truck equipment distributor in the Portland, Oregon, area who came up with the idea of a stand-alone paint company that would handle the painting for his Pacific Utility Equipment business.
The 20-year-old company has expanded beyond the paint booth. Painting remains a major portion of the business, but other activities have helped increase overall sales. Body work is one of those, along with truck graphics, equipment installations, and van interiors.
A team of four applies the paint. Applications range from standard truck and body painting to more exotic jobs such as London-style double-decker buses.
Pacific Truck Colors moved into a new 12,500-sq-ft facility in 1993, a building that housed a 60-foot, flash-dry cross-draft paint booth. That met the company's needs for six years until demand led Pacific Truck Colors to double the size of the building in 1999. In 2003, the company added a 40-foot, flash dry, 2.8 million BTU paint booth.
Other opportunities presented themselves in 2007. Pacific Truck Colors expanded again, this time adding 2,000 square feet to the facility in order to handle a growing line of van interior upfits.
What started as a 12,500-sq-ft shop with a single paint booth now measures 27,000 square feet and operates two paint booths.
“We really have become a one-stop shop for many of our customers,” Rose says. “There aren't many truck equipment companies around that can offer truck equipment sales and installation, collision repair and painting, and vehicle signage — all under one roof. But that's what we do.”
They're back
Barbara Goecks, Roy's wife, owned Pacific Truck Colors. She had suffered deteriorating health in recent years and passed away in January.
“We have bounced back strong,” Rose says. “We have backlog of $3 million, and it's still increasing.”
To prove it, the company sponsored an open house in October. The event attracted customers, along with an array of displays by suppliers and the Daimler show trucks.
“It was great,” Rose says. “We had gone through a period where we weren't what we wanted to be. But we got things turned around. The open house served to let our customers help us commemorate 20 years of service and to celebrate our new beginning.”
