Car Washing At Auto Dealers – Before The Snowstorm??

Winter musings of a car washing company

A big storm is headed for Denver.   A snowstorm with blizzard conditions – 12”-20” of snow, 20+ mph winds, hazardous roads and fools in rear-wheel-drive sports cars.  The temperatures will be in the 20’s, but the windchill will be in the low single digits.  I’m sure some adventurous and clueless newbie from California will get their SUV stuck and loose a digit or two to frostbite. Only the advances of society make a storm like the one that’s coming seem like an inconvenience rather than a dangerous and deadly natural phenomenon.

Cleaning Cars After A Snowstorm

However, society has its sway on our perceptions.  Instead of having to secure our shelter and stockpile food and wood like the early Colorado settlers did, we wonder if we’ll be able to make our miles-long commute from our warm and insulated homes, in our warm and sealed vehicles, to our warm and sheltered workplaces in the morning.

I wouldn’t have considered the impact of societal progress on our human interaction with nature to begin with if I hadn’t been happy about the request of several of our car dealerships for car washing before the storm arrives.  Their concern is one we have been trying to express to our clients for years. The dirt on their cars will be covered by the snow and when their employees use snow rakes to clear the snow off,  the cars will be scratched.

If our car washing service is done before the snow buries them, then it will just be fluffy snow sliding off shiny paint rather than dirty, gritty snow.  We’ve dealt with this for many years. We often get calls for scratches on the hoods, roofs and trunks right after our first car washing service after a snowstorm.  Many dealers assume we caused the fine scratches with a dirty chamois during car washing. But when we demonstrate the pattern our crews use to chamois versus the marks made by a snow rake, they quickly see their lot techs caused the scratches.

It’s good these clients called for car washing before the storm.

Car Washing At Auto Dealers

But whether or not they do, its never good to use a snow rake to clear snow completely off a car.  It’s alright to use the snow rake to clear all but the bottom layer of snow off.  This can be tricky and should only be done by someone who cares enough to pay attention to each swipe of the rake.  The scratches caused by snow rakes are usually very fine and probably won’t be noticeable on used vehicles.

But they will show up on new cars. Unfortunately, the scratches can even show up if heavy snow slides off a car. The weight of the snow does the same damage as the motion of the snow rake.  This is why it’s best to clear all but the bottom ½”-1” of snow off the cars so the sliding snow doesn’t scratch the cars.

Its good to know some of the information we’ve tried to get our car washing clients to act on is finally making difference. Its also an interesting example of how much different our concerns are now compared to our ancestors just a few generations ago.