Watermelon cement mixer shows truckload of Roughriders pride

Saskatchewan Roughriders followers are known for creative ways of expressing their fandom, but a cement truck on Regina roads is taking team spirit to the next level.

The massive mixer on the back of the Inland Concrete vehicle is decorated with a custom watermelon design and emblazoned with the words "Go Riders!"

The watermelon is a nod to the favourite headwear of people in Rider Nation. 

"With the Riders, that's the first thing that comes to mind — everybody is wearing their buckets at the games and we thought this would be a really neat way to show our support," Bill Lenz, a manager with the company, said Monday on CBC Radio's The Morning Edition.

Lenz got in touch with Imagination Ink to make the idea come to fruition.

Imagination Ink's Calvin Nichol said it wasn't a cookie-cutter job. He explained that there isn't an exact watermelon pattern for large-scale printing and, at first, his team found a tile pattern online to convert into a texture.

"We sent the proof to Bill and he said, 'not good enough, we need to have red on it,'" Nichol said. "So we went back to the drawing board and our graphic artists used another texture and created it all from scratch."

He said that in the end a lot of geometry and test runs made the project a success. The entire process took more than a week to complete.

"It immediately stopped people in their tracks and we knew right away this was a winner," Nichol said.

Lenz said he commissioned the truck in May and has received significant attention on the roads as well as social media.

"People notice it from a long ways away," Lenz said. "This was something that we wanted to give back to the community."