MURAL TRAILERS BOOST PROFITS
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from Isabel Bass in San Francisco
Campaigning for wild life preservation has proved a financial boon for a Chicago-based trucker
THE United States trucking industry, like its British counterpart, has come under heavy fire from environmentalists.
American vans have been described by ecology crusaders as dirty, smoky polluters of the environment, as leviathans which endanger the countryside. Most American companies are cringing under this criticism. But one company is following an old American adage on how to treat your critics: If you can't lick 'em, join 'em.
Clipper Exxpress Transport
Company, Chicago-headquartered specialist in piggyback freight-forwarding, has transformed ecology critics into friends. It has not, as ecologist enthusiasts blithely urge, developed any new type of motor, and it has not changed its type of fuel. Nor has the company deadened the sound of its engines, or even curtailed operations in any way.
Instead, it has taken a big leap and has jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon itself. In a unique, imaginative move, it decorated Clipper trailers with brightly painted murals of endangered species such as bald eagles, toucans, leopards, and whales.
These gaily coloured trailers are part of a fleet which Clipper operates from 31 terminals across the United States. The 36-year-old company is a freight forwarder which once worked with boxcars but which is now completely piggyback. It assembles small lots of freight, consolidates these into truckloads, ships the trailers by rail piggyback from the assembly point to destination, unloads and then delivers the lots to the ultimate consignee.
Clipper is about the fifth largest company of this kind in the United States. But according to Jerry Chambers, its owner, founder and chairman, "on the way to the bank, we are number one".
The company's financial— and ecological—successes are due in part to its advertising policy, Mr Chambers said his company likes to have something new for salesmen to show a person or to talk about when calling on a customer. Therefore, a few years ago, the company increased its advertising budget to a sum which looked disproportionate to the size of its operations.
Advertising Award
The large advertising budget and audacious advertising ideas have brought the company much favourable publicity. In 1974, Clipper won the Golden Spike Award—America's prize for advertising which enhances public appreciation of the country's railroads. More recently, the $2,500 spent on decoration for each of the six endangered-species trailers has bought public support, new clients, and even publicity from environmentalists.
These immense rewards were not anticipated when the company first dreamed up the idea for endangered-species trailers. Mr Straker Carryer, Californiabased vice-president of Clipper, said: "When we were putting in some new vans, we wanted not only to put our names on them, but to do something attractive. We wanted not only to draw attention to ourselves, but to support some public endeavour in the field of ecology."
Mr Carryer, a dapper Englishman from Stoke-on-Trent, said the staff discussed various themes currently put forward by environmentalists. "In particular, the field we tackled was the preservation of endangered species," he explained in a recent interview in his above Clipper's San Fran, computer-filled terminal. way to tackle it was to , pletely cover the new trailers with paintings threatened animal wildlife, the staff chose the grey v for their first subject, Mr Ca added.
Grey Whale
Mr Carryer said the whale is threatened Japanese and Russian wh; but it is dear to the hear Americans. It breeds southern California, and rr seasonal emigrations up down the entire west coa America, swimming on water surface only two to miles offshore. "These w are counted and checked ship and helicopter observ posts all along the California coast," Mr Straker commented.
With the grey whale firmly elected as top endangeredspecies candidate, Clipper's advertising manager asked one of America's noted muralists, Ricardo Alonzo, to prepare a mural on the grey whale's plight. Mr Alonzo contacted art school students from a disadvantaged Chicago neighbourhood and, offering them summer employment, gathered together his crew of 38 aspiring artists to tackle the project.
The crew scrambled up and down ladders and soon transformed a trailer's sides into paintings of 45ft whales gushing blood from harpoon wounds. They painted a whitelettered message above the outline of the wounded whale, which read: "Stop whaling. Please write the Russian or Japanese Ambassador, Washington, DC."
The public response to the trailer was so successful that Clipper decided to champion another endangered species. Soon, 7ft bald eagles, blue herons, and yellow-throated toucan birds covered another Clipper trailer, with "Save our Birds" emblazoned in red paint above the trailer's rear wheels.
Gorillas, mountain lions, 1 leopards and white bears next
joined the Clipper menagerie.
But some of the company's drivers began to grumble. "I feel a bit silly driving an enormous wild animal mural down a US highway," one driver confessed.
His colleagues, however, have asked Mr Carryer for copies of his photos of the mural trailers, to show their children and friends. Nevertheless, another group of Americans do not appreciate Clipper's save-the-wildlife appeal. In fact some of the country's hunters have been using the bird trailers as moving targets.
"This is a nation of hunters, and when the bird trailers went across country, we found that hunters had actually put five or six bullet holes through these trailers. And they'd hit the birds on the heads—they were all good shots," Mr Carryer admitted.
Public Enthusiasm
But general public response to the project has been loudly enthusiastic. "What a marvellous sight, an immense animal-painted van roaring down the California highway," one San Francisco cameraman said at a social gathering. People call Mr Carryer to express their appreciation and enjoyment. Others say they wait by rail sidings, hoping to glimpse a Clipper van whizz by.
New customer requests come in, with some people desiring shipments to be made by a bird or a whale trailer. Other customers engage the trailers for special events. Although specific requests sometimes hold up business, as the company runs out an endangeredspecies trailer on demand and leaves it at a terminal until it is filled, these requests are actually boosting company profits.
Furthermore, the mural trailers have made an impact far beyond the wildest dreams of any transport company. They are getting free television news coverage.
A recent California television news programme dealing with endangered species featured Clipper's whale trailer as a strong ally of the grey whale. As the reporter interviewed Mr Carryer on the company's support of ecology, Clipper's large advertising budget and farsighted ideas seemed to be yielding unbelievable results.