Where’s the Damm Marking Paint

What’s Happened to That Damm Paint?

It all started with a simple request: “Jeff, what can you do about the price that we are paying for spray marking paint”

Easy enough, right? Well, that’s what we thought. But let me tell you, ordering paint—specifically dangerous goods-rated paint for our industry—was anything but simple.

First off, we had to figure out what the “usual colours” were. No one could agree. Jim in maintenance swore it was “Sunshine Yellow,” but Denise in operations insisted it was more of a “Safety Orange.” After a week of debates, colour charts, and someone even digging up a photo from 1983, we settled on an odd mix: “Sunshine Orange.” Not sure how we got there, but hey, it seemed to make everyone equally confused and happy.

Next organising samples from the overseas supplier. “Ah Mister Jeff no such thing as Sunshine Orange, what you want instead…….” So out comes the universal Pantone Colour Chart, it only has 2,161 colours to choose from. Do you have any idea how many “shades of Orange there are?”

Ordering samples and testing were the next tasks. “The RED is not Red enough, the Fluro Orange is too watery, we need a lime green as well as a dark green (a specific client request). More samples, more testing, we need to get it right, it is too big an investment to get wrong.

Then came the task of ordering it. You’d think, in the age of overnight shipping, getting a few cartons of paint wouldn’t be hard, well 2,500 cartons actually. But it turns out, this is no ordinary paint—it’s classified as a dangerous good. Of course, the supplier needed a million forms filled out, each more confusing than the last. One form even asked if we had “flame retardant llama wool” on-site, in case of emergencies. I mean, who doesn’t have that?

Once the paint gets finally on its way, someone raised a crucial question: Where are we going to store it?

No one had thought of that. Storing hazardous goods requires a special facility, which, surprise, we didn’t have. So, we started hunting for a place. The local council said “absolutely not” when we suggested the equipment shed. We then considered the old warehouse, but it turned out it was being used as a storage facility for… get this… expired life jackets. Safe to say, it wasn’t available.

After weeks of delays, debates, and a brief, misguided attempt to store the paint in Greg’s garage (his wife was not pleased), we finally found a certified storage facility two towns over. By the time the paint safely arrives and is stored, it will be a marathon task that has taken more than four since the original request.

So, we thank you for your patience, we guarantee that the wait will be worth it.