Locally-owned Road Marking Company Leaving Its Marks All Over Vancouver Island
Fineline Road Marking painted this multi-coloured crosswalk
NANAIMO – Paul Skalenda knows where to draw the line.
So does his team at Fineline Road Marking Ltd., which promises precision and accuracy for their line painting customers every time.
“We have sophisticated machines, technology and a highly trained staff to make sure the job is done right,” says Skalenda. “They’re not bringing out cardboard stencils to do a job – they use our lasers to ensure every line is 100 percent straight, all the time.”
Parking lots and road, highway and airport pavement markings are the mainstays of Fineline, although Skalenda notes the company is continuously painting game courts, including for the increasingly popular pickle ball game – for communities and where people install them at their homes.
Fineline Road Marking’s finished work on city streets
Skalenda purchased Fineline in 1995 when he moved to Vancouver Island, and has built the business to where they have over 12 employees and 3 fully-equipped, cube vans, as well as durable markings trucks.
“We could use 20 employees. We’re looking for new people to come on board. . .we have that much capacity,” he says, adding they’re focusing on doing more work in the Campbell River and the Comox Valley area.
“We do high quality work for every customer, from a $500 small parking lot to a $300,000 roadway project,” Skalenda notes. “Fineline does the ‘icing on the cake’ of a new project. While there might be millions of dollars of infrastructure buried under ground or in the new building, we do the final details that make a new road or building stand out.
“An impressive sight to some would not just be our final markings, but with all of the chalk-lines showing the measurements and calculations used to get there. The chalk washes away with the first rain, and the lines last for many years.”
A Fineline Road Marking crew on the job finishing painting a bus lane
Skalenda is proud of the precision work his team performs.
“We do not ‘eyeball’ the work – every marking in a parking lot or roadway that we work on is measured, squared-in to be parallel, perpendicular and centred as required,” he states. “I tell our employees that any mistake they make in the original layout will be there for the next 30 years when the pavement is re-done. Subsequent line painters – including us – will re-paint the same line, even if it’s off a bit from the beginning.”
Fineline is the longest-serving Vancouver-Island owned line painting company.
“We have many steady customers, many for the full 26 years we’ve been around, who just use us for their pavement markings, because of the excellent work that we do,” Skalenda says, sharing the company’s secrets to its success. “Our team is constantly reminded that we do great work at a reasonable price, and that the customer is the one paying their wages – and a happy customer is probably a repeat customer.”
