Road trips usually sound fun at first thought. After the first couple hours they can stop being so fun. However, on a recent day trip from Baltimore to Chicago, I took notice of a certain type/branding culture that I usually ignore. It’s not elegant by any means, in fact it’s often a dirty, weathered and peeling culture.

Freight trucking is a bold and sleepless industry, one full of grizzled men and gun-slinging Yosemite Sams. And with tough attitudes, we expect tough branding. Maybe. As irrelevant as each truck feels from the next, certain brands come with not-so-bad typography. Now, the images I am sharing are by no means beautiful; honestly, they each feel dated and exist outside of any significant design circle.

With that said, how many times have you pantomimed a trucker’s gesture in hopes of a blaring horn salute in return? In the same small way that truckers are not so tough after all, it is possible that the branding might also contain evidence of class, or at least individual pride. Again, just an observation, but here are a few samples mostly from the Ohio Interstate.

—
After a little while I noticed that some – not all – start to show signs of water or wind as metaphors of transportation. Which is interesting because I can’t think of anything less elegant and weightless than an 18-wheeled MACK truck.

I admire the heritage that comes along with a lot of trucking companies. The unchanged logos and the old fashioned icons ring out, trip after trip. Why should they change? After all, this industry isn’t exactly consumer. Companies need a dependable driver in a dependable truck, so the incentive to hold on to an identity that works must be very important to an corporate owner when it comes to his fleet.

—
Of course I’m going to end with some black letter! Even if it doesn’t make sense in it’s context, I will find a way to see the beauty in any black letter presentation. Actually, this was the truck that caught my attention right from the beginning. The first thing I questioned was “what will black letter lend to the value of this particular brand?” I suppose a related topic to discuss would be the biker scene of America.