How to stencil question

[Rifleman]

I want to stencil the unit info back on the bumpers of my truck, but am not sure of the correct way to do it. When i bought my truck it had none of this info painted on it. Please note this was not because G/L painted over it.

I am not sure if this was due to the fact that the truck had just come out of paint right before the government sold it, but the truck had no unit info painted on it anywhere. From the information i got from checking the background of my truck on S.S. it was used by HHC 11TH Military Police Brigade.

So what info would i put on the stencil, and how would it be spelled out? Would the stencil read "HHC 11 MP BRG? And where on the bumpers would this info be painted?

Now i noticed that some other members have the unit info stenciled onto their trucks on both sides out towards the ends of the front bumper. On the back of the truck they have it on the panel right below the tail gate or on each of the small bumpers.

I also noticed that the unit info is done in black letters on a tan or white background, so would that be the correct way to do mine?

So my question is how do i spell out my unit info and do i use a white or tan background to paint the black stencil letters on?

 

[steelandcanvas]

Here is a good reference:

 

[sigo]

Brigade is abbreviated "BDE". For contemporary vehicles It would likely be:

on one side, usually on the left when facing either the front or rear, "11 MP BDE"
other side "HHC ###"
with the ### representing the administrative number of the truck. Only the admin number is unique to the vehicle, all other letters and numbers remain consistant within the unit. There are sometimes standards for which trucks get which admin numbers depending on the type of unit, but most units assign them somewhat randomly and only attempt to remain consistent within the same brigade or battalion. Overall Army standards for bumper numbers are rarely referenced anymore, or that has been my experience in multiple types of units over the last 15 years. Still, abbreviations are consistent and letter size and font is mostly consistent.

Painting black letters and numbers on a tan rectangular background, or painting Camo letters with only the vehicle Camo pattern as a background would be accurate for a contemporary vehicle. Placement varies as well. On the bumperettes, or the body below the tailgate is accurate. For the front, on the outer edges of the bumper is common.

 

[Rifleman]

WOW GUYS, thanks so much for the information, this will really help me, and a special thanks to Steelandcanvas, that memo you posted is a wealth of information and to Sigo thanks for telling me how to spell out the info on my stencil, i would have never got that right without your help. With this info i can now do it the right way, the Army way.

 

[steelandcanvas]

I should make that bulletin a sticky...I have posted that several times to answer stenciling questions. Glad it worked out for you.

 

[1 Patriot-of-many]

Interesting Steeland canvas, but I have to wonder if that info has been superceded, considering both my vehicles have black lettering on dark colors. The pdf says they should be white letters. I went ahead and painted white boxes with black lettering, just because it looks good My 5 ton has 372 EN BD and 389 EN BN under that on the right front bumper, 416 TEC on the rear left side.

 

[bikeman]

Technically on a woodland vehicle the stenciling should be opposing black and green. The Marines do this still, the Army has continued doing a usual tan background with black lettering over. This has become the standard. The FM covering painting/camoflaging of military vehicles is currently expired and as such, until the Army republishes we're technically operating without guidance. Everyone is still using the old manual for standard CARC painting however...

 

[JSF01]

This may be slightly of topic but, as I was preparing to repaint my bumpers I had noticed a chip in the paint that was pealing that I missed when I was spot sanding. I took my knife and went to chip it away. A big chip came off and there was more of the pant had peeled away, so I continued chipping away. As I chipped away the original bumper numbers started becoming visible Curious I continued to scrap as much of the bumper paint in order to try to figure out the original unit that had my truck. It felt a like I was doing archeological work trying to uncover the original unit. I think I spent a good two hours trying to carefully chip away the top 3 or four layers of paint. Sadly on the left side I was only able to partially uncover the last 3 letters which I believe are "TRP", which from my understanding would be part of the intermediate organization or activity. On the right side the I discovered "DPU 6" with the 6 looking like it was done with a different paint. If I understand correctly DPU would be the unit or activity and the 6 would be the truck number. If that is correct that makes sense that the 6 was a different paint(or at least a different can) since the truck probably was part of a batch and they went through and marked them all "DPU" than went back through and gave them the vehicle number. Anyone have any ideas on what they might stand for, In the manual I was looking through does not seem to list those abbreviations. It might be a long shot since it sounds like lots of units did not follow proper tech data when stenciling bumper numbers, but I am hoping that if they abbreviated the units in a way that made sense someone could come up with good possibilities on what they might mean.