Brian and Kathy Mathis might well take a certain satisfaction from telling motorists where they can get off.


Its not that either of them is prone to road rage. Its just that the need to tell drivers where to go and where not to go, and what to watch out for along the way, has everything to do with keeping them in business.


The couple owns National Barricade & Sign Co., a 50-year-old business that occupies an 8,000-square-foot office-and-manufacturing facility at 6602 E. Main in the Spokane Valley. The company is one of fewer than 10 businesses in Washington authorized by the state Department of Transportation to make warning, guide, construction, and parking signs for use in traffic regulation on public streets and highways in the state, Brian Mathis claims. With only one other such company in Spokanethat being Sharp-Line Industries Inc.National Barricade is among a select group of producers of such ubiquitous roadside advisories as NO TURN ON RED, NO U TURN, PED XING, and the less common, but no less compelling, BRIDGE OUT.


Mathis says that National Barricade, which employs Kathy Mathis and three other people, manufactures well over 10,000 signs a year, sells traffic barricades and other traffic-regulating devices made by other companies, and has annual revenues of more than $1 million.


Its primary service area is Eastern Washington and North Idaho, but it also has customers in Montana, and has shipped signs and other products as far as Nevada, Alaska, Iowa, Virginia, and Hawaii, he says.


Many of the signs it makes are street and highway signs that range from the small green white-lettered street-name signs found at most intersections to four-foot-wide stop signs and other traffic-regulation signs that measure as much as nine feet across. The signs are made of aluminum, some of which is purchased in specific sizes, and some of which is cut to size from sheet stock at the companys shop, Mathis says.


National Barricade uses a silk-screen printing process on some of its aluminum signs, but creates most of them by applying layers of pressure-sensitive reflective vinyl, like that used in making vehicle license-plate tabs, to the surface of the blank metal, he says. It makes all of the traffic-regulation signs to the detailed and continually evolving requirements of the transportation departments of the states in which it does business. Those requirements specify the size, type, color, reflectivity, and quality of materials that must be used, and most are approved or inspected routinely by the city, county, or state agency that has jurisdiction over the roadway where the signs are to be installed, Mathis says.


The signs are composed using a personal computer and a standard commercial illustration software that creates the background, letters and images to appropriate specifications. Many of the more frequently used signs are already composed and available in the softwares archives. Once the signs are composed, the specifications for them are communicated to a plotting device that cuts the lettering and images from various specified vinyl stock materials, which then are applied by hand in layers over the blank aluminum. The edges of the signs are then trimmed, and if necessary, the corners are rounded using press-cutting machinery.


Manufacturers of the reflective vinyl say the material will last for seven years, although its useful life varies, depending on the location of a sign and the amount of exposure it has to direct sunlight, which is the primary agent in the deterioration of the materials reflectivity, Mathis says. Some state agencies use a tool that looks much like a police radar gun to measure the amount of reflectivity remaining in aging traffic signs and to tell when to order replacements when signs no longer meet state standards, he says.


More than half of the signs National Barricade manufactures are traffic signs, which the company sells mostly to contractors, rather than to the state and counties and cities, which typically make their own signs and account for only about 10 percent of National Barricades traffic-sign sales, Mathis says.


The City of Spokane and Spokane County require developers to provide all their own signsall the street signs, stop signs, speed limit signs, and others required on the streets within the development, he says. Each development has a traffic-control plan that specifies all the signs needed by the project. When contractors (who are putting in roads in developments) bring that in, we can give them a quote right from the specifications.


The company also makes a variety of specialty signs, including some for private parking lots and others that are intended to convey larger amounts of information. Such informational signs often are posted by city and county departments and agencies to give public notice of land-use hearings or other government proceedings, or by developers wanting to announce a new project by posting a sign on the site where it is to be developed, Mathis says. Most are much larger than traffic signssometimes as large as 14 feet by 10 feetand, because they are meant to be temporary, often are mounted on wood, rather than aluminum, he says.


National Barricade also makes othes types of custom signs, often using a computer scanner to capture a corporate logo or some other icon or design element, which is then transferred and cut into vinyl using the same plotting device.


Although the company may have orders for more than 2,000 signs a month during the summer construction months, Mathis says the wide range of styles and specifications that are used in traffic signs makes it difficult to manufacture inventory in advance of the peak sales period. Instead, the company orders plenty of blank aluminum stock, pressure-sensitive vinyl, posts, and other hardware in advance of the season, he says, and then often relies on lots of overtime from employeesand sometimes even relativesto meet its orders during the construction season.


In keeping with its name, National Barricade also offers customers a variety of traffic barriers, including florescent-orange barrels and safety cones and orange-and white-striped barricades and fencing, Mathis says. The company also sells trailer-mounted, electric traffic-warning panels and a range of strobe lights, flashing lights, and reflectors, he says, as well as an assortment of safety supplies and accessories for road crew-workers.


Because many of those crews operate from relatively small, equipment-filled vans and trucks, they often order more lightweight, portable types of traffic-safety signs that can be stored easily and set up and taken down quickly, Mathis says.


In addition to selling barricades, signs and related equipment, National Barricade rents them, although rentals provide only about 10 percent of the companys revenue, he says.


The Mathises bought the company from Pete Freeman, who retired and sold National Barricade 18 months ago after owning and operating it here since about 1993, Mathis says.


It was Freeman who updated the companys sign-manufacturing procedures, introducing the use of a computer and upgrading the manufacturing process from paint stenciling to the use of adhesive vinyl, he says.


Mathis says National Barricade has been in business here since the 1950s. It was purchased in the early 1960s by Willy Huson, who owned and operated it for about 30 years, moving the company from a site near the intersection of Eight and Carnahan in southeastern Spokane to its current location in 1968, before selling it to Freeman about nine years ago, Mathis says.


The Mathises had become familiar with National Barricade through a Spokane-based, parking-lot maintenance business they own, called Mathis Striping & Snowplowing Inc., which they formed about seven years ago as the outgrowth of two earlier parking-lot maintenance businesses they had operated in succession here after starting the first in 1978.


I looked at the customer base of National Barricade and found that they were a lot of the same people I was already dealing with, so I purchased the company, and Kathy runs it, Mathis says.


Although Kathy Mathis manages the day-to-day operations of National Barricade, the couple relies heavily on the experience of their three employees, all of whom have been with the company for a number of years, Mathis says.


Weve relied on our employees knowledge, he says. Weve both learned a lot about the business from them, and were still learning.