(coach engine roaring)
(upbeat music)
- Hey, good morning everyone.
Welcome to Marathon Mondays with Mal.
Let me get out of the forklift here.
What's going on everybody.
We're in the paint department, as you can see,
and that was just staged for dramatic effect.
I wouldn't know how to operate that forklift right there.
Anyway, hope everyone had a good weekend.
We're in the paint department. Last week, where were we?
The cabinet shop.
Last week we were in the cabinet shop.
This week, we are in the paint department
and there's a lot going on.
We got a lot to show you.
So stick with us.
Coach 1361 here, right next to us.
This is gonna be an awesome paint job.
This is an X3, very custom coach.
So from, I mean the paint is gonna be incredible.
Anyway, it's about to be clear.
Look at this paint job over here you guys.
I think John was showing you before we went,
before I came in. Isn't that beautiful?
And three quarters of it is all black,
all the way down to the front.
Very cool.
All right, let's go this way.
We got a lot to show you.
We've got to get it in, one thing I wanna show you.
I've been down here with Abigail and John
for the last half hour waiting to go live with you guys,
and we've been watching the paint team here at Marathon.
do a lot of work.
John, show him in here how much time
and effort goes into just masking off the cockpit.
This coach is headed down to the production floor
in probably a week, maybe a little bit less.
But look at how much work goes into getting everything
set up, just to keep everything clean and ready.
Lot of masking, lot of paper, properly done.
Very cool.
All right.
This coach is about to be pulled into a stall one.
Here in Marathon, in Coburg at the Headquarters,
we've got four 60-foot booths.
So that's one of the cool things about our paint department.
We don't have to move the coaches to another facility
or to another building or another town,
it's all done in this one building.
We're blessed with the ability to be able to do that.
And it also ensures that the coach stays right here locally,
so that production happens right after it's painted.
We're gonna, oh, what I was telling you in here,
they were just replacing all the filters.
That's one of the things these booths, you know,
they collect a lot of dust.
So you really wanna make sure that the filters
are changed on a regular basis.
So that's one thing we were watching the guys doing.
Let me show you something really cool. Let's go over here.
We're gonna go over here.
All right.
Fiberglass department over here,
but that's not what I wanted to show you.
Marathon will, we don't just paint coaches.
We paint, we've painted motorcycles
and golf carts and all that.
But trailers, take a look at this.
Here is a trailer that we are painting
with a custom paint scheme for a customer.
And I've had this question asked a lot of times,
this is a triple-axle trailer.
A lot of people have asked, do you paint trailers?
Will you paint a trailer to match my coach? Absolutely.
Here's one that's masked up and being ready to be sprayed.
So that's really cool to be able to show you that
because that's something I get asked a lot
and yeah, I want everyone to know
we definitely do paint trailers
and there's one right in there that's about to be sprayed.
All right, we're gonna head into the depths.
Let's go this way.
Hopefully we shouldn't have any Wi-Fi issues.
1361 getting ready to go in.
I'm gonna show you one of the coaches
that I am really excited about,
I think I've mentioned it before.
It's in booth four.
Actually we can go around here, take a look at this.
They're doing a complete cleaning of bay one or stall one
or booth one, I guess I should say booth one, right?
You see those new filters down there at the very end.
What a cool thing to be able to paint
our coaches right here in this building.
All right, let's go down here.
I'm gonna show you, 1366 is right in here.
Take a look at this you guys.
This is one we've talked about, that's coming up.
This one is gonna be headed to
the production floor real soon.
And this is gonna have one of the more
elaborate paint jobs that we've ever done.
And I don't wanna give too much away 'cause
we'll have a reveal show and I don't want the owner,
'cause this is a custom coach,
I don't want them to see too much before,
but there's a lot of work going on on this right now.
John, let's go out here and walk around to the other side.
This is the cool coach 1106,
1106 is in here for some repair.
Got some nice texturing on the side.
Take a look at the stars of the American flag over here.
This is gonna be one of those coaches
that people talk about.
This is gonna be one of those coaches that we will
show you in depth when it's completed.
Wow, it's gonna be great.
All right John, let's go back this way.
Watch your step.
All right, let's go this way.
Very, very busy department.
This is something that I've shown before,
but here's the fender.
So we build these in-house and we can paint them in house.
So what, you know, if they're damaged
or if somebody wants to upgrade,
this is a specific style kind of that vintage Corvette look,
or if they've got this look and they wanna go to something
that's a little bit more traditional, we could do that.
'Cause we build them right here in house.
All right.
What you see here is a coach
that's being shell prepped to go into paint.
Now, one of the things that takes a lot of time
is you have to sand down the sides of the coach,
because you wanna make sure that
you're painting on even surface.
And although they come from Prevost very ready to paint,
they still take a little bit more finishing to make sure,
go ahead, John, I'll follow you.
To make sure that all of the edges,
all of the surfaces are even and ready.
And so you're looking at an H3 double-slide,
and as you can see, there's a lot of sanding
that went into this to get it down to a real even surface.
Very nice.
And that's just it.
It's not just pulling it in and painting it.
Let's go out. Let's go out this door you guys
and see if there's something out in service
we can look out before we say goodbye for the week.
It's always cool to come to the paint department
'cause they're doing everything from new coaches
to pre-owned, to remodels, to repaints, to repairs.
So there's always a lot going on.
What you see here, this is the stain, this is where
all the stainless polishing happens in this bay.
There's nothing in here right now,
but we have a bay dedicated just for stainless polishing.
Okay, come on out.
All right.
And then we're back outside
on the west side of the building.
This is the back side of service,
or if you're a Disney fan, the back side of water.
Were there any questions Abigail that we wanted to reference
while we were, while we had some time?
- Yeah, we had a couple of questions.
Ron DiMauro says,
"Mal, I've been wanting to ask this question.
Does the design team or the art department ever do
an artist's rendering of a future Prevost bus prototype?"
- So Ron's asking an interesting question about prototypes.
For the most part, no.
We will not, we get, what Prevost is building
is what we build on.
We build on the Prevost chassis.
So I hope I'm answering Ron's question correctly,
but basically what it is is, when Prevost does an update
like two years ago, we had the new X3.
It was about two years ago.
We waited until we got that new X3
and then we did some paint renderings
on the updated X3 chassis.
- And then one other question we have Larry Fisk
wants to ask, just curious how long
a complete paint job takes from start to finish.
- That's a great question.
Larry's asking a question that
a lot of people like to talk about.
How long does a paint job take?
And all of that depends on the complexity of that paint job.
A paint job that is a single color
could take, let's walk this way,
I'll show you one of the most dynamic paint jobs
that Marathon's done in a very long time.
John I'll walk alongside you here.
So Larry's asking a great question.
Paint jobs can take anywhere between 25 days and 35 days.
Some more elaborate paint jobs, they go up in days.
Also you have to take into consideration,
is it a holiday week?
Does the staff work on a Friday and Monday?
Depending on, you know, like Christmas week or Thanksgiving,
we lose some days, things like that.
But yeah, it's on the average,
you should just get into your head that
it takes anywhere between,
yeah, on the average, let's just say 30 days.
30 days for a Marathon paint job.
I think all of you will agree that Marathon
has really stepped it up over the last couple of years
on their paint jobs.
I think Marathon has always done
a very good job on their paint jobs.
I think they've gotten more aggressive.
That's the term I'm gonna use.
Over the last couple of years,
Marathon has gotten a whole lot more aggressive
when it comes to paint design
and being able to paint different features into that coach.
And I think a lot of people have noticed that.
Let's go right in here.
All right.
We're gonna stop right here
and I'm gonna let John get along shot of this coach.
This paint job was designed to emulate a race car.
Take a look at that. How aggressive is that?
I just love what was designed.
Now, Sara Fideler from our marketing team
worked on this along with the customer.
The client had an idea in mind
and they worked on this together.
And it's just, it's simple and aggressive
and dynamic all at the same time.
It's really, really cool.
And it's got a Marathon logo that's ghosted in.
It's just really, really cool.
And that is an example of the power of Marathon.
Here in Coburg, it's done in this building.
This was painted a couple of weeks ago
and then came down to the production floor.
And so, excuse me,
it's really cool to be able to see it go from a bare shell,
like we saw that H3 double-slide being prepared
to painted like this and then brought down
to the production floor,
which it will stay for the next four or five months
as we build the custom coach inside.
That being said, everybody,
that is why I wanna highlight the paint department a lot
because they do so much different work
and they do amazing work here at Marathon.
Be yourself and do good things.
I'm gonna get out of here for the week.
Hope everyone is having a good one.
I'll see you next Monday.
Reach out to me if you're looking to sell your coach,
get into a coach, M A L W, that's malw@marathoncoach.com.
That's my email.
If you're in Florida, if you're in Texas,
if you're in Oregon, we've got locations all over.
Stop in, say hello to the staff there.
Let us know if, what you're looking to do,
getting on the road, enjoying being in a Marathon.
Take care everybody.