How often do you allow someone else to operate your vehicle? Your friends, children, or relatives may occasionally ask to borrow your car. Or have you dropped your vehicle off at your local garage, dealership, auto body shop for repairs or state inspection? At these facilities, someone else will be driving your vehicle. This means someone else’s hands have been on the steering wheel, door handles, and interior trim. A single sneeze or cough could spread bacteria all over the inside of your vehicle. If the vehicle has not been properly decontaminated prior to you driving away, you and your family may be subjected to whatever is in the air or spread throughout your vehicle.

In the auto body repair industry, collision repair shops have quickly educated themselves to understand the proper method of cleaning a customer’s vehicle. It is important for our employees to be protected as we move a vehicles into our shops for repairs. Prior to moving a customer’s vehicle we disinfect the insides of the vehicle. This is necessary for many reasons, however, the most significant reason is to assure our staff that the vehicle is clean of harmful bacteria before we begin our work. In a shop environment technicians and staff members easily move between several different vehicles in a day’s time. It is critical that we do not transfer bacteria or viruses between our customer’s vehicles and also to not transfer germs into our own transportation as we leave to go home at the end of the day.

The very last responsibility performed on our customer’s vehicle is a final clean to the interior before it is moved out front for customer pick-up. The importance of this message is to reinforce and promote an internally clean vehicle for our customers. Don’t be so quick to lend your transportation to another person without cleaning the vehicle afterwards. You have no idea where that vehicle has traveled and who else may have gotten a ride in your car or truck. Be vigilant and aware. When you do take your vehicle in for repairs at your local garage make sure they disinfect your vehicle before you pick it up. Don’t be bashful, ask them directly before you pay your bill, “Has my vehicle been disinfected?” You might even ask them to show you exactly how the disinfecting process was done and where in your vehicle it was completed. At our facility we take photos of the decontaminating process prior to and post-repair. We do this to prove the process has been completed and we are also reimbursed for the cleansing procedure on our invoices by customers and their insurance companies. The year 2020-21 has been a life changing experience for all of us and it does not look like it will get any easier in the near future. Help us help you stop the spread of bacteria, germs and COVID-19 anywhere we can eliminate it.