Guides
Putting your company name on a van you do not own
A delivery van with a phone number on the door earns its keep twice: once doing the round, and again every time it sits in traffic. On a hired vehicle there is a step before the signwriter, and it is not a formality. In Dubai the artwork has to be approved before it goes on, the permit is tied to that specific vehicle, and the application cannot even be submitted without a document that only the owner of the van can issue.
The rule
A sticker is advertising, and advertising needs a permit
People expect a permit for a full wrap. Very few expect one for a name and a mobile number on two door panels, and that is where the fines happen.
Commercial branding on a vehicle in Dubai is treated as advertising, and advertising on a vehicle is permitted by the RTA. The permit is issued per vehicle, against a specific design, and it is meant to be in hand before anything is applied. Putting unauthorised stickers on a vehicle carries a AED 500 fine, which is more than the cheapest permit costs for a year.
That catches out two kinds of customer in particular. The first is the small business taking its first vehicle: the signwriter is booked, the vinyl is cut, and the permit is somebody else’s problem until it is not. The second is the company that already brands its own fleet correctly and assumes a hire vehicle works the same way. It does not, because the vehicle is not theirs.
What is being approved is the actual artwork, not the intention. You submit the design showing every side of the vehicle, with a mock-up and the trade licence, and the approval is for that design on that vehicle. Change the design later and it is a new submission.
The price
What it costs, by how much of the vehicle you cover
The published fee schedule is priced on two things: how much of the vehicle the artwork covers, and what class of vehicle it is. Quotes that sound wildly different from one another are usually different lines of the same table.
| What goes on | Vehicle | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Logo and trade name on the front doors, no windows | Any | AED 250 a year |
| Partial wrap, windows excluded | Light vehicle | AED 500 a year |
| Partial wrap, windows excluded | Cooler truck or pickup | AED 1,000 a year |
| Full wrap, windows excluded | Light vehicle | AED 1,000 a year |
| Full wrap, windows excluded | Cooler truck or pickup | AED 1,500 a year |
| Full wrap, windows excluded | Heavy bus or heavy equipment | AED 2,500 a year |
| Replacing or amending a permit | Any | AED 100 |
A knowledge and innovation fee of AED 20 is added to the application, and companies registered with Dubai SME have been able to claim a 50% discount with an official letter. Fee schedules are revised from time to time, so treat these as the current shape of the thing and confirm the figure for your own vehicle class when you apply.
The line that surprises people is the first one. A logo and a trade name on the two front doors, clear of the glass, is AED 250 for the year. That is the option most small fleets actually want, it is the cheapest thing on the schedule, and it is half the cost of the fine for not having it.
Note also that our chiller vans, trucks and pickups sit in their own column rather than with cars. A full wrap on a cooler truck or a pickup is priced above a light vehicle, which matters when you are costing a branded round across a mixed fleet.
The NOC
The one document only the owner can give you
This is the step that makes branding a hired van different from branding your own, and it is the reason this conversation has to start with us.
Where the vehicle is rented or leased, the application has to carry a no-objection certificate from the leasing company. Not a verbal agreement, not a line in an email from a salesperson — a document from the registered owner of that plate, saying it has no objection to this artwork going on this vehicle. Without it the submission does not proceed.
So the order of events matters. Ask us first, book the signwriter second. What we need in order to answer is small: the plate or the booking reference, the dates the vehicle is yours, and the design you intend to apply. What you get back is either the certificate or an honest reason why not — usually that the vehicle is committed elsewhere after your dates, which makes a year-long permit on it a poor investment for you rather than a problem for us.
There is a second certificate that catches some applications: if the artwork carries a brand that is not yours, you need either proof that the trademark is registered in your name or a notarised no-objection from whoever owns it. Property advertising has its own requirement again, through the Dubai Land Department. None of that is ours to issue, and it is worth knowing before the design goes to print.
The plate
The permit belongs to a plate, not to your company
Everything awkward about branding a hire comes from this single fact, and it is the same fact that governs site access and food approvals on this fleet.
Approvals in Dubai attach to the vehicle. A permit issued for your artwork on one plate says nothing about another plate, even when the second van is the same model in the same colour doing the same round. That is exactly how gate passes behave too, as the access guide sets out, and it has the same consequence here.
Which means a vehicle swap is not a neutral event. If the vehicle is taken in for servicing, or replaced after a breakdown, what turns up carries a plate your permit does not cover, and the branded panels are on a vehicle sitting in a workshop rather than on the road. On a long contract that is manageable if it is planned for. On a short one it is a reason to think again.
The practical rule we would give any customer is this: branding suits a vehicle that stays with you. If the same van is yours for months at a time, a permit and a set of door panels make obvious sense. If the vehicle rotates, or the hire is a few weeks, the money is better spent somewhere that does not have a plate number on it. Monthly hire is where this starts to pay, and on a contract fleet it is standard.
The artwork
What may actually go on the panels
Most rejected designs are not rejected for taste. They are rejected for a handful of specific rules that a designer outside the UAE would have no reason to know.
Arabic is not optional. Arabic has to make up no less than half the advertising content, and the company’s Arabic trade name has to match the trade licence and the vehicle’s ownership document exactly. A transliteration that looks right but differs by a letter from the licence is a resubmission.
You may only advertise what you are licensed to do. The activity on the van has to appear on the trade licence. A company licensed for general trading cannot put “cold storage and distribution” on the doors because it has started doing some, and that is a sensible rule to be on the right side of in any case.
Some surfaces are off limits. The windscreen and the front upper part of the vehicle stay clear, and there is a limit of five images per side. Flags, religious symbols or slogans, smoking imagery, images of real people, barcodes, three-dimensional effects and languages other than Arabic and English are all excluded.
Changing the colour is a different question entirely. If the wrap effectively changes the vehicle’s original colour, that needs approval from Dubai Police before it goes anywhere near the RTA file. On a hired vehicle, assume the answer is no unless it has been agreed with us in writing first: the colour on the registration card is ours to keep accurate.
Our fleet
Branding a chiller body is not the same job as branding a car
The fee table already separates cooler trucks and pickups from light vehicles. The fitting is different too, and it is worth saying so before a design is finalised.
An insulated body is a panel, not a car door, and the usable area is interrupted by things a designer working from a photograph will not plan around: the roller shutter on the 3-ton chiller, the hinge line and lock bar on rear doors, the refrigeration unit at the front of the body, and on a pickup the drop sides that fold down. Artwork that reads perfectly on a flat rectangle can lose a word across a shutter slat.
Two practical constraints go with that. Nothing should cover the refrigeration unit’s air intake or grilles, or the temperature display if the body carries one, because both are there to be read and to breathe. And on a food vehicle the body itself is part of an approval that belongs to the plate, so if a design involves anything beyond applied vinyl, raise it before it is cut rather than after.
Removal matters as much as fitting on a vehicle you hand back. Agree in writing, before anything is applied, who removes the vinyl at the end of the hire and what condition the panels are expected to be in. It is a two-minute conversation at the booking and an expensive argument at the handover.
Honest limits
When branding a hire is the wrong answer
We would rather talk a customer out of this than take a booking that disappoints, so here is the arithmetic as we see it.
The permit runs for a year. If the hire runs for a month, you are buying twelve months of permission for four weeks of visibility, plus the fitting, plus the removal. Door panels at AED 250 can still be worth it on a short contract when the round is dense and local and the van is seen by the same customers daily. A full wrap on a three-week hire almost never is.
The second case against is a fleet that rotates. If vehicles are swapped between jobs, or if the number of vans on the road changes with the season, you are managing a permit per plate on a fleet whose plates keep changing. That is administration you have invented for yourself.
And the third is the job where the vehicle is not the shopfront at all. A chiller van doing night deliveries into back-of-house entrances is seen by loading bay staff and nobody else. The money buys more as a better round, a second vehicle at peak, or a longer contract at a lower rate — which is the conversation we would rather have.
The order of events
Before you call the signwriter
Done in this order it is a few days. Done in the other order it is a fine and a reprint.
Confirm the vehicle and the dates with us, and ask whether that plate can carry branding for the length of your contract. Get the no-objection certificate in writing. Have the design drawn showing every side of the vehicle, with the Arabic trade name exactly as it appears on the licence, and check it against the content rules above before it goes anywhere. Then submit the application with the trade licence, the registration card and the mock-up, and allow roughly three to seven working days.
Only once the permit is issued does anything get applied to the vehicle. The fitter will want a clean, dry, shaded space and will not thank you for a yard in August, which is a scheduling detail worth agreeing at the same time as the hire. Keep a copy of the permit with the vehicle documents, where the registration card already lives.
Questions
Branding questions
Can I put my logo on a van I am hiring from you?
Usually yes, on a contract long enough to justify it, and always with the permit first. Tell us the plate or booking reference, your dates and the design. If the vehicle is committed elsewhere after your hire we will say so, because a year-long permit on a van you keep for six weeks is money you will not get back.
Is a small door sticker really advertising?
For these purposes, yes. A trade name and a number on the front doors is the cheapest line on the fee schedule at AED 250 a year rather than an exemption from it, and applying one without a permit is a AED 500 fine. The cost of doing it properly is lower than the cost of not doing it.
What happens to my branding if the van is swapped?
The permit covers a plate, so a replacement vehicle is not covered by it. Say at the booking that the van will be branded and we will treat a swap differently, keeping the same vehicle with you wherever the service schedule allows and telling you in advance when it cannot.
Can we use magnetic signs instead, to avoid all this?
Whether the artwork is removable does not change what it is, so treat it as the same permission question and ask before you order anything. What removable panels do change is the handback: nothing is applied to the paint and nothing has to be taken off at the end.
Do you issue the no-objection certificate?
Yes, where the vehicle and the contract allow it. It is a document about one plate and one design, so we need both before we can write it, and we will not issue one for a vehicle we cannot keep with you for the period.
Who removes the vinyl at the end of the hire?
Agree it in writing before anything goes on. Removal is straightforward when it is planned and expensive when it is discovered at the handover, and the body panels on a chiller are less forgiving than a car door. Raise it in the same message as the design.
Ask before the vinyl is cut
Send the plate or booking reference, your contract dates and the design you have in mind. You will get a straight answer on whether that vehicle can carry it, the certificate if it can, and a view on whether the permit is worth buying for the length of hire you are planning.
WhatsApp or the contact page both reach us. If the hire is not long enough yet for branding to make sense, the monthly rates are where that changes.