There are two basic construction methods on any billboard: 1) wood or 2) steel. But which is correct? In this Billboard Mastery podcast we’re going to review the methodology to determine which type of material to use and what the benefits and disadvantages are.
Episode 119: Steel Vs. Wood Transcript
From the inception of the modern billboard industry back in the 1920s, there's been a running debate when building billboards of whether it's better to use wood or steel to construct the framework that holds the billboard in the air. This is Frank Rolfe, the Billboard Mastery Podcast. We're gonna ponder the differences between wood and metal to help make better decisions on which route you should go. Now, these are your options for any billboard. Number one, wooden telephone poles, the old original dating back from the foundations of the business. Another option, metal I-beams, outdated today, although still used occasionally, very, very prevalent back in the '40s and the '50s and the '60s and even the '70s to hold up signs, kind of a equivalent to a telephone pole but made out of a metal I-beam. And then, of course, you have the metal monopole, the single pole that holds the sign off the ground, the Cadillac of the industry. It was created by the oil and gas industry back in the '70s and the '80s. Actually, it's oil transmission pipe. That's where it originally came from, the pipe that would not hold pressure so you could not put oil in it.
They would throw it to the side and it later became used as billboards. That was one thing they found they could use that pipe for. Now, what do they all have in common? Well, they all have in common they're strong and they're able to hold things up in the air and they're able to hold things up in the air even when the wind velocity is very high. I've seen wooden billboards which have survived winds over 100 miles an hour. So, I can't say that the wood is an inferior product simply based on that one item is strength, but let's dig deeper into what some of the other variations are. Now, let's talk for a moment about beauty. What looks the best? Well, clearly when it comes to looks, the monopole wins. So, based on appearance, steel always wins the day because wood is never as attractive as steel. Even I-beams require fewer vertical supports than wood does. So, if you needed to have six wooden telephone poles to hold the sign up, you could probably get by with three metal I-beams or one metal pole. And since the fewer the poles you see on the ground, the better, then metal always wins that debate.
But then, you have cost. Now, between wood, I-beam, and monopole, clearly wood is by far the cheapest option. So, when it comes to money, wood always, always wins. And then, you have flexibility. Flexibility means your ability to work around what's on the property currently, whether it's a building or some natural feature like a creek. Now, on that, obviously, the metal wins because a monopole can go anywhere. If you go out to Los Angeles, you'll see these things called super flags. It's a monopole that starts on the back property line and then cantilevers out all the way to the front of the property. They don't even look physically possible when you see them. First time I saw one when I owned my billboards in Los Angeles, it blew my mind. I could not imagine the amount of force on that pole or on that fitting that holds the two poles together. It looks structurally impossible that that could work. But that's not possible with a wooden sign. Wooden sign, those telephone poles have to have the billboard pretty well balanced upon those poles. You can't go up 50 feet and then out 100 feet with wood. Never going to happen. Wood's going to snap in just a minute.
So your ability to orient billboards on the property, regardless of what's going on, are always better with metal. So when you add them all together, what do you get? Well, it really is going to be on a case-by-case basis. If we're trying to fit a billboard on a developed property, then metal is probably gonna win. And if we're trying to fit a billboard on a more rural property or raw land, then it's gonna come down to a couple other items. Big one being how long a commitment can you get for the sign to be there, and the other being what's the budget. Now, even if I was in the middle of a big city, if I get told by the property owner, "Oh, I'm gonna probably redevelop the land in five years," there's no way I can build a metal sign. Because if he's gonna terminate my lease in five years, I'm gonna have to make all my money well ahead of five years in. And only with a wooden sign can I possibly have a chance of making that happen. But if I had a metal sign, I would never even be able to pay off the debt by the end of the five-year term. So how long the longevity of the sign on the property has a big part in that choice.
And then the other is cost. If you're building a sign out in a rural area, you can only rent the sign for a couple hundred dollars a month, there's no way that metal is ever going to work for you. Not gonna happen. So again, you'll be relegated back to the wooden telephone pole variety of sign. Now, there are a couple other instances where wood just simply isn't gonna work at all. One is going to be if you're trying to put your sign into very, very rocky terrain. Because monopole signs and I-beam signs have the ability to have foundations that change up based on the land itself. So, if you're drilling down where the sign must go and you hit a giant boulder 10 feet down but your foundation is supposed to go 15 feet deep, there are engineering ways to put a larger footprint of concrete underground to hold that sign up. But it doesn't hold true for the wooden sign. A lot of the different ways they can do foundations like the bell hole foundation, those aren't going to work for wood. Those are strictly for metal. And a bolt cage design where you basically have the pole starts at the surface of the earth and goes up by pouring a giant concrete feature in the ground with bolts coming out of it.
Again, you can't bolt down a telephone pole. Another time you probably have to go with metal over wood is if you're in an area that holds water, a floodplain marshy area, because the wood will completely rot. I once built a sign that would seemingly violate everything we just talked about. Rural area, low dollar rent, a sign could be there, you know, we didn't know for how long. But the problem was that water stood on that ground all of the time. So the only way I could make sense of that sign was to build something inexpensively out of metal, which is a hard task to do. I called around everyone who built billboards and I did find someone who had an old billboard that they had taken down, laying in their yard, that they would reinstall for me at a fraction of normal price. If I had been unable to do that, I could not have built a billboard because if I put wooden posts in that mushy soil, they would have almost immediately rotted and the sign would have then fallen down. In every location, there's a right answer and a wrong answer. Some locations are very clearly and obviously metal quality and others are wood quality.
But it's very important for you as the billboard company to make the right selection. There's no one that watches over your shoulder. Most states, counties and cities don't care whether you go with the wood or the metal variety. Even some property owners are not really that knowledgeable to know on the front end what the choice should be. But you, as the ultimate owner and operator of that sign, you have to make the right decision. This is Frank Rolfe, the Billboard Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.