Epoxy primer designed for automotive undercoats or paints is the way to go.
I have to say wanting "just a daily driver" paint job doesn't mean you have to go to the bottom of the barrel with Rustoleum wheel barrel paint.
Mordacai and everyone else, please understand I am not knocking you or your truck. There IS a place for all these products either IMRON, ZeroRust, and Rustolium. I come from a different frame of mind for a number of different reasons. The infomation I offer is simply that, information from another point of view.
There are many super easy to apply quality products available at budget prices made by
REAL automotive paint companies.
If I wanted "just a daily driver" paint job I would sand it good with 220 or so apply a "value line" epoxy like PPG's OMNI and then top coat it with OMNI single stage urethane paint. WHAM BAM, no sanding between primer and paint, no waiting months to be sure of no reactions, just follow the recommendations on the tech sheets supplied by PPG.
You could do the same with other brands, S-W has a nice enamel primer sealer for even less than the epoxy (though not as good) and they have a single stage Urethane paint or only about 100 bucks a sprayable gallon in any color. This is a TRUE acrylic urethane paint. I had many customers who used this system or a little higher quality epoxy or urethane sealer on logging trucks, cement trucks and the like with great success. Heck, I had guys use it on cars and trucks that actually saw some car shows.
You really don't need to work so hard. I see this all the time on the forums as well as I saw it as a paint rep. Don't feel bad not knowing it. I saw truck shops who painted fleets of trucks with goofy procedures such as sand blasting a tractor, lacquer priming it, sanding it (holy crap, can you imagine hand sanding a 25 ft long grader!) then painting IMRON over it! What a mess, crappy durability AND a ton of work, it was a loose-loose procedure.
Click on the following links and go to the "Fleet refinishing" systems available for the tractor/trailer fleets that roam the highways of America. These multi $million (sometimes multi hundred $million or even $Billon) fleets like COKE, UPS, all way down to small companies with three or four pieces of equipment trust systems like these to protect their investments.
DuPont and NASON Sherwin-Williams, Refinisherselect, Western, Dimension Martin Senour (Sherwin Williams pro...rts stores) , Cross/FIRE, Econobody, MSU PPG, OMNI Instead of trying to figure out what will work with what, just use a system that is used by the people who want "just a daily driver" paint job on their $100,000 truck or trailer.
These systems are easy to apply being you sure don't want your truck or trailer sitting in a shop instead of on the road making money. There are ways to pull off some amazingly nice looking paint jobs (ever see a shabby COKE truck?) with a mininum of effort and money too.
All you need to do is fix the dents, spot prime those areas, then sand the whole thing with 220 or so. Seal the whole thing and paint it, it is that easy.
We are talking budget prices with the OMNI, Cross/FIRE, NASON stuff, but just a few bucks more will get you some AMAZING stuff.
Systems for the IMRON line from DuPont, Delta line from PPG, Genisis line from S-W or Prism line from M-S offer some almost bullit proof durablity. We are talking painting a cement truck and being able to wash it with "Reversacrete" an acid solution that removes DRIED concrete!!
They have sealers what are unbelievably tough, I am talking you can barely scrap it off with knife! Not only that they cover up a world of sins from poor preparation. They have to be, sanding a 45ft long trailer is just not going to be done with the same finesse as your average car. The products used have to make up for some of that lack of proper preperation.
These products may not cost as much as you'd think. They are priced for a VERY competitive market, truck fleets. To get the business at a manufacturer or fleet making or maintaining hundreds or thousands of trucks, tractors, trailers, or other pieces of equipment means
BIG money to the paint companies. Because of this there are many products that have little profit left in them to be competitive with the other paint manufacturers. That is good for YOU, lower prices.
I have seen some of these "expensive" products beat the living pants off the "less expensive" products on paper, in real numbers simply because they needed less product (higher solids) for the job and less labor (read that more user friendly) to apply, thus cheaper.
I had one manufacture of utility boxes (the beds on pickup trucks with the cabinets on the sides) that we "moved them up" from a "value line" paint that cost half as much per gallon to the top of the line paint because you needed less coats to cover. Less paint,less labor, less cost.
You could even check colors for price. S-W Genisis for instance has some pretty high cost colors like certain oranges in the cheapest price range with whites. The reason being these colors are used by some big nationwide account and they want to stay competitive so no one steals the business from them.
I know I went down a number of different roads in this post but it was all to explain why you don't need to be so cheap when painting "just a daily driver" paint job.
