Mixer truck promotes UM athletics

Private businesses in Missoula already have stepped forward to promote The University of Montana with a beverage truck and semi tractor-trailer painted in UM themes. Now a concrete mixer truck has been added to this growing Griz armada.

The truck, recently purchased by LS Jensen Construction & Ready Mix, will turn heads with UM logos and pictures of four outstanding University athletes: Kevin Criswell, John Edwards, Katie Edwards and Scott McGowan. All are shown in their respective sports uniforms.

“We just wanted to be part of the Griz Nation,” said Stan Dugdale, general manager of the LS Jensen branch in Missoula. “We thought this would be good marketing for both our company and UM.”

The $170,000 mixer truck is a 2007 Kenworth that can haul 10 yards of concrete. The truck weighs about 28,700 pounds when empty. Dugdale said the truck’s fiberglass drum has been decorated with an $8,000 vinyl wrap created by Fluid Studio of Bountiful, Utah, located near Salt Lake City.

“It’s probably 50 or 60 pieces of vinyl stuck on there,” he said. “They print it out and then heat it with a propane torch to put it on.”

Dugdale said the idea for the truck came from Utah, where mixer trucks already sport Weber State and Brigham Young University themes. Helena Sand & Gravel, LS Jensen’s sister company, also recently decorated a mixer in honor of Carroll College in Helena.
Dugdale expects the truck to be used in parades and for special UM events. However, it will be a working truck, and it poured its first load of concrete June 21. “But if they want it at Grizzly events, we’ll shine it up and bring it down,” he said.

“The truck has received an awesome response from the University and local community,” Dugdale said. “We drove it through town the other day — down Higgins and Broadway — and it was awesome to see people sitting in their cars going, ‘Whoa, look at that!’”
Dugdale said his employees are excited to help market UM, even though the company employs several engineers who, like himself, are graduates of Montana State University in Bozeman.

LS Jensen, part of Oldcastle Materials, has locations across the United States and has expanded its Missoula operations in recent years. In fact, the company now employees about 100 people locally.

“We are pretty excited and proud of this mixer,” Dugdale said, “and we are proud to be part of the whole Griz thing. Our company is gradually trying to become a bigger part of Missoula.”