What it Takes to Win the Super Bowl of Line Striping
BY AsphaltPro Staff
Jason Gomez, owner of Ontario Parking Lot Services Ltd., Ontario, is the world’s best line striper. Or, at least that’s what his children, 6 and 9, have been telling their friends and teachers ever since Gomez won the line striping competition held at the National Pavement Expo (NPE) in January 2024 in Tampa.
Alongside the trade show and education sessions for which NPE is known, the 2024 show saw the start of a new tradition where attendees were invited to put their line striping skills to the test. The competition, sponsored by Graco and Pavement Stencil, saw more than 100 individuals use a Graco LineLazer ES 500 to stripe and stencil an American flag for a chance to win a Graco LineLazer of their own (first place) or a Graco ES 500 Stencil rig (second place).
“I decided to compete when I saw that the winner was going to win a Graco LineLazer ES 500, for one,” Gomez said, adding that he uses an identical machine on many of Ontario Parking Lot Services’ jobs. “I love those machines.”
His existing electric LineLazer striper has been handy since it runs on the same battery as all of Gomez’s DeWalt tools. “I have a whole bunch of those batteries, which is more than enough for a day of painting,” he said. “Because the machine is electric, it’s so quiet and there are no fumes, so it’s great to use indoors.”
The chance to win his favorite striper was certainly a motivating factor, but Gomez had a second reason, too: “The competition is just a fun idea.”
About Ontario Parking Lot Services
Gomez started Ontario Parking Lot Services in 2010. “I went to school to become an architect, but over time realized I didn’t enjoy it at all,” he said. “With architecture, you’re working at a desk all day and there’s a very long time scale to see the fruits of your labor.”
In his early 20s, Gomez approached his father, who owned a fairly large building maintenance and landscaping company and was performing some striping and sweeping for his customers, with a proposition. “I asked if I could spin off the parking lot services he was doing into a separate company.”
“With striping, I get to work outside most days and I can see the results of my efforts every single day,” Gomez said. With his father’s support, some equipment and a few dozen existing customers, Ontario Parking Lot Services was born.
“When I took over, [our book of work] was very small,” Gomez said. He began learning how to use Google Ads to get the business’s name out there. “It took some time to learn the hang of Google Ads, but once we did, it was a night-and-day difference for the business.”
Prior to advertising, he said it was rare to receive a call inquiring about the company’s services outside of referrals. “Then, all of a sudden, we were fielding several calls a day during the busy season, so it was a major turning point for us,” Gomez said.
“When I first started the business, I thought I wanted to grow the company into a very large operation because that’s what I saw my dad do with his business,” Gomez said. Then, a few years ago, Gomez had a change of heart. “I realized I enjoy the smaller size of the business, at least while my kids are still young. Summer weekends are busy, but I have the flexibility to make my own schedule and I get to spend a lot of time with my kids without being stressed out about work. This is really a job that affords me the type of life I want.”
“Maybe I’ll grow the business into something larger when my kids are older and I’ll be looking for something else to fill my time, but for now, I enjoy the size of the business and the type of work we do,” Gomez said.
Since incorporating Ontario Parking Lot Services, Gomez has focused more on the striping side of the business rather than the cleaning. “With cleaning, there’s significantly more investment in equipment and labor, so it really comes down to the economics of it,” he said, estimating three quarters of the company’s work is striping.
Custom Quality
As a result of the decision to remain smaller, Gomez said Ontario Parking Lot Services has found an interesting niche that larger companies aren’t as well-equipped to handle: custom painted markings, such as company logos or playground games for local schools.
“With custom markings, there’s a lot more office work to get the design and stencils just right whereas the time spent painting isn’t very time consuming,” Gomez said, “so it’s not a very good niche for larger companies who have a lot of employees and need to keep multiple crews busy.”
Gomez estimates roughly half of the company’s line striping work is custom markings while the other half is parking lot striping. “The work that pays the bills is the line striping, but the work I most enjoy is the custom markings,” he said. “I like that there’s a way to be artistic when it comes to line striping.”
When local school districts in need of parking lot striping reach out to the company, Gomez sets up appointments with the principals to discuss not only their parking lot services but also to show them the types of games they’ve painted for other schools in the past, ranging from mini hockey rinks or soccer field striping to foursquare and hopscotch. One time, the company even painted a “floor is lava” obstacle course game.
“We talk about which games would be best for the space and the age of the kids,” Gomez said. “When I went to school, we just had a pole with a ball attached to it and a couple of basketball nets. It’s nice to do these colorful, artistic games for the kids. We paint them over the summer and when the kids come back in the fall, they have a bunch of new games to play.”
In fact, Gomez also painted several games for his own children’s school for free. Although he doesn’t usually get to see the children play with the games they paint, he’s enjoyed seeing his own children and their friends play the games he painted at their playground.
“This can sometimes be a thankless business,” Gomez said. “Few people outside of our industry care about the striping in the parking lot, or even notice it, but at schools there’s always so much fanfare for the work we do.”
Win It All
Gomez believes his experience with custom markings came in handy when competing in the line striping competition at NPE. “When you’re doing that custom work versus a large shopping center, the attention to detail required is much higher,” Gomez said. “For example, if you’re painting a company logo right at the entrance to the company headquarters, people are going to be paying a lot of attention to that.”
Secondly, Gomez said he was well-positioned to win the competition because he uses an identical machine on many of his jobs. “In fact, I used my [LineLazer] a few days before the competition to paint some custom markings in a warehouse, so I guess you could say I was already ‘warmed up.’”
It was actually because of a past NPE show that Gomez chose to invest in a LineLazer of his own. The 2024 show was his fourth time attending NPE. “I try to go every year or at least every other year,” he said, adding that it’s a great opportunity to catch up with industry friends and colleagues as well as to learn new information to take his business to the next level.
For example, utilizing the automatic layout feature on his striping machines. “I had a Graco machine with the automatic layout feature, but I never used that feature because I wasn’t familiar with how to do it,” Gomez said. Then he attended a class taught by Chad Jung about the use of technology in striping at NPE to learn how the automatic layout feature could make him more efficient.
The automatic layout feature allows users to set the width of each parking stall. Then, as they push the striper across the lot, it drops a dot of paint at the preset intervals. “All you have to do then is stripe at each dot and make sure each line is straight, which is easy to do because of the laser system,” Gomez said. “Seeing that technology in action at NPE was a real lightbulb moment for me. I’d probably still be out there with a tape measure without that show. That class alone and the skills it taught me have been enough to pay for the cost of attending NPE 100 times over at this point.”
“The people who teach the classes at NPE are out there doing this work day in and day out every summer, so they really know their stuff,” Gomez said. “The show is also just full of little hints that are invaluable that there’s no other way to easily learn besides trial and error, trial and error.”
Line Striping Super Bowl
Throughout the 2024 show, Gomez kept returning to the competition area to see how his striped-and-stenciled flag stacked up against the competition. “Before I competed, I watched a few others to see what types of mistakes and issues they were having,” he said. “Most were struggling with starting/stopping the stripes neatly, so I paid extra attention to that.”
“I just tried to do the nicest job I could possibly do,” Gomez said. It’s a level of effort and attention that he tries to bring with him to every job. “Sometimes, line striping can get tedious doing the same thing over and over. The way I keep it interesting is I’m always trying to make each line better than the last.”
“The technology on some of these new striping machines has made the learning curve to stripe well a bit easier, but at the end of the day, I think it still comes down to practice, having a steady hand and attention to detail,” Gomez said. “I also think I got lucky a bit, too.”
Luck aside, Gomez’s experience, steady hand and attention to detail paid off for him. At the end of the show, his flag took first place. “I’m still shocked I won,” Gomez said, adding that he’s very excited for his new Graco LineLazer ES 500. “I was probably going to buy another one this year anyway, so it was really nice to win one instead.”
Gomez said the second machine is going to come in handy throughout the 2024 season, not only for the company’s parking lot jobs but also its custom work. “These machines are great for our custom jobs where we aren’t running our machines constantly because of the intricacy of the stencil we’re painting,” he said. “Instead of having them run the whole time or pulling a cord to restart the machine every time, we can just pull the trigger when we’re ready to paint again.”
Having two electric machines will also make it easier for Gomez to offer more colors for his custom work. Last year the company offered 12 colors; this year, with the second machine available, Gomez plans to add orange and pink to the mix.
The machine was delivered to Gomez in Ontario three weeks after the show, once Gomez’s family had returned home from a post-show road trip around Florida. “When my family found out the show was in Florida this year, they jumped at the chance to go,” Gomez said. Although the trip was planned well in advance of Gomez’s victory, it’s only fitting that after winning “the Super Bowl of line striping” that Gomez and his family would end their trip at Disney World.
NPE 2025 will also take place in Tampa. If Gomez chooses to attend next year’s show, he’ll have a chance to defend the title his kids have given him as “the best line striper in the whole world.” “That’s probably been the best part of winning [the competition],” Gomez said. “I feel like a hero in their eyes.”