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Welcome to the Billboard Mastery Podcast, where you will learn the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform diligence on, select the construction type, build, rent the ad space and operate billboard signs. And now here is your host – the guy that built from scratch the largest privately-owned billboard company in Dallas/Ft. Worth – Frank Rolfe.
The first time I ever built an offset monopole structure, I had one huge problem, and that was the crane operator would not let go of the billboard, convinced that offset could not hold the weight and everything would come crashing down. To make it worse, I was building the billboard next to a big fancy apartment complex. So he envisioned that if he let go of the sign after attaching the head of the sign to the offset and the whole thing came crashing down, it would then hit the apartment complex. So he viewed himself as probably being on the late night news, losing his license, being in litigation forever. And it took me hours to convince him it was okay to let go. This is Frank Rolfe with the Billboard Mastery podcast. We're going to talk about offsets, how unique they are, how to use them as a tool, but then other things to watch out for.
So what is an offset? So on a monopole billboard structure, you have a big metal column, traditionally maybe three feet in diameter, coming out of the ground, going straight up vertically. And on a standard billboard, you attach the head of the sign, which is the torsion bar and the uprights and the ad faces, directly onto that pole. But back when they started building monopoles, they realized that the conveyance from the old wooden telephone pole models to the metal allowed them to have a new special tool to get billboards into strange locations, that no longer did they have to have the pole directly under the sign. They could have the pole, but then they could have an arm go out horizontally, and then connect the rest of the sign to that arm. And that arm is what we basically call the offset. Now, why is an offset of any importance? Why would you ever need to do that?
Well, let's say you want to build a billboard on a property line. So you've got property A and property B, they share a common property line. And you've got to get that billboard fully contained within property A. So you put in the vertical pole right on the property line, if there's no setback requirements by law. But if you put the sign on top of that, you're gonna be sticking over in the other guy's property with your ad face, catwalks, and your light fixtures by a bunch of feet, five feet, six feet, something like that. So for me to put that pole right on the property line, I've got to offset that sign six feet, let's say, back onto property A, so that when you take a tape measure and drop it off those light fixtures, nothing is overhanging into property B. That is the whole concept of the offset. And over the years, the offset kept getting bigger.
Initially, offsets were strictly for back-to-back signs to get the catwalks and the light fixtures off of the neighboring property, so they were small. Then people started to realize, well, we can build them even bigger. Let's go ahead and put like super V signs on those poles and make that offset two times bigger or even three times bigger. The forces on these things are impossible for me to calculate. I'm like the crane operator. I just don't think it's possible. I don't know how you can take a vertical steel column and then a head of a sign which weighs 10,000 or 15,000 pounds and connect the two 20 feet away and not have that arm just immediately crack or bend or collapse. But it's a good thing we have things called engineers, because engineers can do all the mathematics on that and assure us that everything will work fine.
And I've built many, many offsets and never had one fall over or crack or break. But the minute the offset was developed, suddenly there was a new tool in the arsenal for people trying to build billboards. And that was the ability to put that pole in the most out-of-the-way place imaginable, and that's on the property line. Now, the big problem with offsets, despite all their many positives as far as sign placement, is in fact cost. Offset signs are very, very expensive. They have to be, because they're engineered to a whole different level than a regular monopole sign. Regular monopole sign, there's a whole lot of balance in it. And the offset, there's no balance at all. You're just having to build something that has so much strength that it can hold this big thing out. It's like holding a 20-pound barbell in your arm, sticking straight out away from your body.
How long can you do that before the fatigue gets to you and you have to let go? But that sign never lets go. And on top of that, you've got massive amounts of wind load making those pressures even worse. But the big issue when it comes to offsets is money. How much money? A lot of money. That offset could add 50 to 100% onto the cost of your standard monopole structure. And then it begs the question, is it worth it? Do you really need it? Now, I've noticed some people building offsets in locations where it really wasn't a very good value. They put an offset in to get the pole on the property line, but they could have been on the property line and probably nothing would have happened. Maybe the area where they're looking at where they put that pole was in a parking lot. Well, that monopole sign is not gonna take up more than one space of that parking lot. But even then, it might not even take up a whole space.
You could have it spliced between two adjoining spaces. And so both would still be usable, maybe just for like a smaller car, something like that. And then I've seen people do offsets out like almost in rural agricultural areas. I don't really understand why they're doing that. That farm is not gonna be developed for the longest time. So in situations where you're not trying to stay clear of development, the offset is probably overkill. But when you're looking at a location where you've got to get that pole on a very developed property, on a definitive property line, or you know down the road the development will knock you down, or the person who owns the property says, "Well, I won't sign your lease unless you can get that pole right here on this spot," then the offset is priceless, because without it, you don't even have the ability to build the structure at all. This is Frank Rolfe with the Billboard Mastery podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.