Anime & Transformers: Truck art thrives in Thailand
Bangkok: Music pounds from the speakers and LED lights ripple across the customised cabs at a “truck party” hosted by proud Thai drivers showing off their lorries with swag. They own 20- wheeler behemoths that turn heads on the roads with lurid graphics and paintjobs of everything from unicorns to Transformers and Disney characters on their cabs and containers — while large Michelin Man dolls often add to the visual assault.
Thailand is a major logistics hub and longhaul truck routes connect goods from Myanmar and Laos to the North, Cambodia to the east to Bangkok and Malaysia in the south. Like their South Asian peers, Thai truck owners are enthralled by decorous vehicles — with new designs spinning out across social media and the best artists charging up to $ 1,600 for their work.
“These trucks are used in real life,” said Teerasak Inklom, while controlling the state- oftheart sound system on his heavily decorated 10- wheeler at the party in a disused field in Rayong, on Thailand’s eastern seaboard. “The relationships it creates can also be useful when you have accidents or technical issues on the roads,” he added, of a job that is often lonely and also prone to be targeted by criminals in remote areas. At a vast warehouse near Bangkok, dozens of workers cut stickers and spray on designs ranging from traditional flower patterns to Japanese robot anime craze Gundam. It belongs to Sirintra Phichitphajongkit, managing director of Soonchai Industry, one of Thailand’s largest truck assemblers that has recently devoted one section to painting the trucks.
“I think it’s about psychology” Mr Sirintra said.
When the trucks are “nicely decorated, drivers are motivated to be extra careful and not to leave any scratches on them.”