Chasing the F-Rainbow

By Claudia H. in the category From Truck Till Bag
Story date
8. Mar 2019
Tags

Claudia’s job is unique to FREITAG. She and her team of truck spotters remove worn-out tarps from around 6'700 trucks every year. In this post, she tells you how it all works, and why she’s so picky about tarps.

In tarp procurement – aka PLEK – our job is to ensure that the supply of materials for our unique products never dries up. To achieve this in 2018, we needed to provide our F-actory in Zurich with exactly 657 tons of truck tarps. Old tarps don’t simply grow on trees, so we also tour Europe to find our raw materials.

«If it’s black or pink, bring it on over!»

We’d like the tarps that we make bags from to have some popping color schemes, but it’s not quite as easy as that. Since we want to use truck tarps that were on the road for quite a time, we have to make do with colors that were the height of truck fashion five to ten years ago. 

For example, blue and yellow were all the rage back then, which explains why you can almost always find that combination in F-Stores. But we’re especially keen on colors that are especially unusual to find on a truck. If it’s black or pink, bring it on over!

Of course, a tarp also needs to be of a certain quality if it wants to be made into a unique FREITAG product. If the tarps have holes in them, so will the bags. We won’t use any that feel like cardboard to the touch, either. 

THE RACE FOR SUPPLIERS

We’re by no means the only tarp aficionados around, however. On the contrary, we need to stand out above competing customers and strike right when the best tarps reach the end of their service life on a truck. That means we spend a lot of time researching, flipping through truck magazines and newsletters, visiting trade fairs, and maintaining contact with our suppliers.

We’re often on the phone regaling transport companies, tarp manufacturers and vehicle dealers with FREITAG’s story. Best case scenario: that story is so persuasive that the companies become new tarp suppliers and start coming to us whenever they want to get rid of another batch. 

Doing my job also means suffering an occupational illness that you can only catch at FREITAG: being on a constant look-out for especially handsome tarps. Whether it’s from the passenger seat or at a service station, we always have our phone cameras at the ready when we come across a rare tarp.

This truck-spotting fever has now spread to the rest of the F-crew, who regularly share their snaps with us.

Once we’ve captured the tarps and brought them back to Zurich, they’re really in for it. There’s still a long way to go from tarp to bag, but that’s a whole other story.

We want your truck pics

Just seen your dream tarp drive by? Use the address below to send your truck snaps directly to PLEK. Who knows, maybe you’ll see them again someday in the form of a unique product... truckspotting@freitag.ch. 

Got some tarps?

Are you the proud owner of a transport company, or do you often find you have tarps lying around for some other reason? If so, click here to find out everything you need to know about becoming a supplier.

 

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