If you’re looking for the absolute toughest conditions around to test the durability of a modern latex wrap job, try a racetrack situated in the melting sun of Las Vegas, where summertime temperatures can exceed 110 degrees.

That punishingly brutal environment had done a number on the graphics on an entire fleet of custom-wrapped emergency and recovery chassis cab vehicles provided by Iowa’s Twin State Equipment, a national commercial truck dealer that serves as an official sponsor at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

With March’s annual Cobalt 400, a NASCAR Sprint Cup race, looming on the horizon, Twin State’s Las Vegas dealership was looking for a fast, professional printing company to step in and provide a new set of full-body images for 25 of its new and existing Jerr-Dan wreckers and tow trucks – and hopefully use products with much greater durability.

Ryan Pritchard, a fifth-generation member of the family that has owned Twin State since 1913, says the fleet’s existing wrap jobs had been heavily compromised by sun exposure.

“It was a bit of a nightmare,” Pritchard says. “They’d been sitting there in the heat all year-round, and that amount of time baking in the sun meant that cosmetically, they really needed a lot of TLC. Really, you don’t want to actually see our vehicles out on the track during the race, in use, so it’s more of a showcase piece for us. Worse, we’d kind of taken our last wrap job for granted, as we figured anyone could do it … which was not true.”

Pritchard opted to enlist St. Paul, Minnesota-based Brand ink to tackle the new job. He had worked with Brand ink owner Nicholas Lowry on previous, smaller-scale projects; for a major, high-visibility occasion like a nationally televised NASCAR race, Twin State needed a miracle worker for a fast-approaching deadline.

Lowry’s six-person shop has spent the last five years establishing a solid reputation for commercial printing and installation jobs ranging from wall wraps, murals and floors to unique projects creating movie set props. Given the time constraints and scale of this job, Lowry says he appreciated the close relationship with Twin State’s decision makers, including Pritchard.

“Typically, for a super last-minute project, getting sign-offs and meeting the timeline are not necessarily related, but we were fortunate to get the approvals for design very quickly – in the end, it was all a four- or five-hour turnaround,” Lowry says.

For this particular job, Brand ink used 3M Controltac Graphic Film with Comply v3 Adhesive IJ180Cv3 and 3M Scotchcal Gloss Overlaminate 8518, products that tout their durability and, as a result, would be suited to the oven-like conditions on the raceway tarmac.

“We use a combination of solvent and latex, though the solvent has to off-gas for 24 hours, which adds a day of waiting,” he says. “With latex, there’s no issue, and you save 24 hours, which is critical in a case like this. It’s not perfect for every job, but we’ve done a lot of shopping around to find what products and manufacturing method are appropriate.”

Lowry says he also focuses on consistency in his output as a critical factor in the entire job, large or small.

“Ideally, all of the product should come out of the same printer – that’s really a best practice, though it’s not always possible,” he says.

Lowry put his entire team to work and was able have all of the components printed, boxed, labeled and shipped to Las Vegas in 72 hours. That was the easy part, he notes; Brand ink had been warned that the installation could be a very tough process, given the condition of the existing artwork and the potential challenges of working in an active racetrack environment, gearing up for a NASCAR event.

“The question of how hard it’s going to be to get the old stuff off – that’s the X factor in all of these projects,” Lowry says. “You also wonder how good a facility you’ll have to work out of – is it going to be a place that’s not heated, like you might get up north in the winter? In this case, it helped to be in Nevada – and everybody loves to go to Las Vegas, so it wasn’t hard to convince two of our guys to head out to do the work.”

Twin State was able to secure extensive garage space at the track. When they arrived, Lowry’s installers confirmed that the existing wraps were indeed in pretty rough shape.

“(Whoever did the last job) had used economy vinyl and no laminate, so that meant a lot of cracked and damaged paint, and a couple of the hoods needed to be completely repainted,” he says.

“Those hoods are the worst spot, since they absorb a lot more radiation and UV. So getting it all off was a challenge, but the key was to know about it in advance. And stuff had mostly been prepped when we got there, though we went expecting the worst.”

In addition to updating the wraps on industrial-sized tow trucks, rollback haulers and other custom recovery equipment, graphics also had to be installed on a number of new trucks being circulated into the Speedway fleet, including a series of Ram trucks.

All totaled, Lowry anticipated his staff spending three and a half days handling the project. But he was also happy to hear that his team ended up getting the job done in two long days, which gave them the chance to spend the rest of their trip hanging out by the pool – a nice break from a long Minnesota winter.

“The track was really helpful and the space was just what we needed, so [my team] got there early, worked as late as they wanted, and were able to do the entire job quickly and efficiently,” he says.

The new 3M products come with a five-year warranty for graphics installed on the sides of all of the trucks; Lowry says there’s no warranty for those sun-blasted hoods, though another alternative might have been to push for more UV-resistant laminate, which would have offered a two-year warranty.

“Next time I will try to remember to sell that better,” Lowry laughs.

Pritchard says he was impressed by Brand ink’s professionalism, and says Twin State also learned a lesson about the importance of using top-of-the-line materials, especially in the torture-test environment of the Las Vegas race track.

“The whole project really demonstrated the value of working with a good partner and a superior-quality product,” Pritchard says. “Their lead time was incredible, they’ve got a really good relationship with 3M and their product output is top shelf.”