Thinking about buying a car? Try calling an exterminator.
Truly Nolen Pest Control's trademark "Mouse Cars" are a ubiquitous sight in the Old Pueblo, as are the company's vintage automobiles, which pop up in parking lots and car shows across the city.
But it's not just smart advertising. They're also for sale.
Truly Nolen, which has its corporate headquarters in Tucson, sells off its fleet vehicles when the company is through with them. The company does an even bigger side business buying and selling those trademark antique cars.
It might be an offbeat way to diversify for a business in the bug-zapping industry, but company executives say Truly Nolen is identified as much with its oddball fleet as it is pest control.
"When I tell people I work for Truly Nolen, the first thing people ask is about our cars. The next question is usually about the antiques," said Michelle Nolen Senner, the company's head of marketing and advertising.
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The "Mouse Cars" themselves are not for sale in their mousy incarnation, but retired vehicles can be purchased - repainted and ears removed - from the "Buy Cars" section of the company website.
Most purchasers buy them for the parts, Senner said.
But the bulk of Truly Nolen's auto business is done in antique cars. The company owns about 300 classic cars nationwide, including about 40 in Tucson.
The collection itself fluctuates as cars are bought and sold. The company is constantly getting inquiries from people wanting to buy from its collection, as well as people hoping to sell their own classic cars to Truly Nolen, Senner said.
Truly Nolen sells about 20 antiques per year, she said.
The company also maintains its own garage to keep the cars in parade shape.
Ron Pratt, who cleans and details the cars, and keeps them rotating between locations across town, said he gets a lot of questions about Truly Nolen's collection.
"It happens all the time," Pratt said. "I'll stop to get fuel and people will start snapping pictures and be wanting to talk."
The same goes for driving the cars across town. They get a lot of attention.
"People see these cars on the corner, but when you drive past them they're like 'Wow'!" he said. "I think a lot of people think they don't have motors in them."
Company lore says the antiques collection started by accident. Truly Nolen, the company's namesake, and his wife drove older cars when the company was first starting out and, because advertising was tight, Nolen painted every car he owned with the company's name and number.
After leaving one of his cars broken down in a mechanic's parking lot for several days, Nolen realized the car was a billboard no matter where it was sitting. People were calling in, saying they'd seen the car from the road.
So after the business started turning more of a profit, Nolen began acquiring genuine antiques for advertising. Nolen, who lives in Florida, still handles the antiques sales and negotiates the prices himself, Senner said.
"We've been doing this a long time," she said.
Contact reporter Alex Dalenberg at adalenberg@azstarnet.com or 807-8429.