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In our business, we use a document called a bill of lading, every day. Our drivers prepare a bill of lading for each shipment they make, so over a period of time you can see we would use quite a few of them.
The bill of lading is a form that has information about the shippers pick up location, delivery location and the vehicle(s) to be shipped. It is signed by the shippers agent at pick up and then again at time of delivery. In addition to being proof of delivery, the bill of lading serves as a condition report for the vehicle. On the bill of lading, is an illustration of a generic automobile that the driver uses to document the condition of the vehicle. If, for instance, the vehicle has a dent on the drivers door and the front windshield is broken, he can mark these items on the picture representing the vehicle on the bill of lading, have the agent sign it at time of pick up, then the agent at delivery will know the damage was there when it was picked up, and did not occur along the way. Otherwise, of course, we would be responsible for the damage and have to pay for repairs.
The bill of lading document we used has evolved over a period of 15 years. The latest version included a vehicle that was hand drawn by me in the mid 90’s. It had worked quite well for us, but recently we decided to switch printing companies and no one had a master copy of the document for the printer, so I began to create a new one. Most of the elements were pretty straightforward page layout items. Piece of cake. The only thing that was throwing me off was the illustration of the car.
I did not want to hand draw another one because I thought the 2004 version deserved something better. I exhausted the usual resources (internet) but could not find anything acceptable, so I took drastic measures.
I had managed to find a Buick that looked pretty good, but the angle at which the picture was taken was too low. Compared to the old BOL cars, you cannot see the top of the car, thereby making it difficult to document any damage to the top. In order to get the angle I wanted, it was apparent that I would have to create it myself.
First, to find a generic automobile that could be representative of many different makes and models. A 4-door is generally used and it is really tough to use a sedan to represent a van or SUV. But all we can do is try to hit the biggest target. I decided my Lexus would be as good a car as any.
I parked it on the back lot to take a photo. The first photos (at ground level) still did not show enough of the top, so I put the tripod and camera into the back of a pickup truck and zoomed in a little. Pretty good angle. I shot some pictures of the front and they looked good. Now the tricky part is getting the exact same angle from the back. It had to be very precise because I wanted to use the same tires in the final drawing for both front and back. Tires had historically been my weakest body part to draw, so I wanted to get them right, but only have to do it once. I marked the spots on the pavement where the tires were and turned the car around to line up exactly on those spots. Took a picture of the back from the exact same camera location and got to work on them.
I imported the photos into Photoshop then sized them to a working size to trace over. I then cut and pasted both photos and lined the tires up on the canvas. From there, I removed all background noise, leaving just the vehicle itself. I used the paintbrush tool to outline the vehicle and the various body components for the front and the back photos. The tires I was so afraid of would come next. There really is no tool for drawing circles and even if they were, tires in a photograph taken at an angle are not round. They are oval shaped. I created a new layer so the tire would be separate from the rest of the car and did use the same paintbrush tool to carefully outline the outside portion of the largest tire.
From there, I selected the tire portion and resized it to make the inside line (the edge of the wheel). This still didn’t look quite right and I had to select that a put a little squeeze on it so everything would proportion correctly. It looked pretty good after that. Then I simply copied the tire/wheel combination and pasted it, then resized to use as the back tire. So far, two tires and wheels, one circle.
Next, you turn off the layer containing the front photo and turn on the back. I moved the photo carefully until the tires lined up with the ones I had just drawn. Then I could trace the vehicle from the rear perspective. I did not have to draw the tires and wheels again, because the tires for the front, were also the ones used for the back. So now I have what appears to be four tires and wheels and only had to draw one circle.
The finished drawings show the car from the front and the rear and are actually using the same tires and wheels in each illustration. Here are the front and rear drawings with the photo layers hidden.
From there, I placed the two drawings side by side and into a page layout of the new bill of lading. I made some graphical changes on the document and also made some text changes. It is difficult squeezing in everything that is needed onto one 8 1/2 x 11 page, but eventually it worked.
Here is the finished piece. Also I use the same drawings on our condition report. Click here to see all of the bill of lading pictures. You know you want to.
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