TYLER, Texas — Many car owners in East Texas are still dealing with the aftermath of last Sunday’s hail storm.
For those who don't have a garage or some kind of covered parking spot, their car might have seen significant damage. So what is one to do when their car has been pelted by hail? Call the auto shop, of course.
"Our call volume goes up tremendously like you said, we have 300 phone calls in the last five days. It also increases the volume of business, and kind of slows the whole industry down citywide, statewide, or whatever impacted areas there were," said Gino Springer, director of operations at Keith Hodges Collision Center.
Last weekend’s surprise hailstorm certainly caught a lot of folks off-guard and it sent a lot of cars to the auto shop. But if people from East Texas know with spring coming, severe weather season is coming too.
"In a factor of modeling your business out, you can actually see the trends in your historical volume. We would project out through the month of May that we’re gonna see this type of increase, and we actually increase the staffing to try to meet those needs so that we don’t experience any slowdown in our turnaround time for clients," Springer said.
Peltier Kia in Tyler has factored this early hailstorm into their business model in a different way. Since Wednesday, they’ve been offering a discount on the hundreds of vehicles that sustained minor damage from the storm.
"Well it is kind of a unique sale as you might say, it’s not very often that over 200 units that you have in stock have a slight amount of hail damage. And we’re just fortunate that we were able to turn around real quick and get this sale geared up, and pass those savings along to the customers," said Bruce Strassburg, general sales manager for Peltier Kia.