Your car looks like a houseful of frat boys had a party in it and a flock of birds had a party on it. Your radio is busted and that big black cloud coming your way is a reminder that the wiper blades haven’t been changed since the Nixon administration.
You’re thinking you’ll have to spend the better part of perfectly good weekend day cleaning and fixing your car, or waiting at the shop while someone else cleans or fixes it.
Well, don’t give up so fast. In and around Chicago, a number of companies can give you back your time. They’ll come to your house or office to clean and wax your car, to fix pockmarks in windshields before they become cracks or to install a new sound system and burglar alarm. There’s even a company that will come to your workplace, set up a mobile shop and change your oil, wiper blades, transmission fluid and anything else that those quick-lube places can do–while you’re at your own job instead of watching them do theirs.
Here’s a sampling of the services:
The cleaning
Professional basketball star Juwan Howard suggested that Autobath might want to take its show on the road. Howard, who lives in the Chicago area when he is not in Washington, D.C., playing for the Wizards, was talking to co-owner Henry Cruz a few months ago when the subject came up, according to Cruz’s partner Garlund Gibson.
“He was saying that in Washington, where he has five or six cars, he just calls and they (a similar company) come out to his house and do it all right there, and he was wondering why we can’t do that,” said Gibson. Neither Cruz nor Gibson could think of a reason. Today, the company, which has had a South Loop location for three years, has three trucks that drive to people’s homes to clean and wax cars. Some 15 people a weekend take advantage of a home-delivered cleaning.
That business is brisk should come as no surprise to anyone who has experienced a Midwest winter, not to mention a spring, summer and fall. The weather helps explain why Daryl Behling is in the same line of work. The idea of opening an automobile detailing business came to him on a visit to California.
If there was a need for such a service in the mild climate of California, Behling reasoned that such a company would take off in Chicago, where “there’s a pretty harsh environment, industrial pollution, the hot blazing sun, acid rain (and) our beautiful winters.”
For six years, the 36-year-old Behling has been running West Coast Mobile Detailing. (The company has nothing to do with the West Coast other than that is where Behling “stole the idea from.”)
Every day he drives from his Barrington house to detail (“a glorified word for cleaning”) automobiles as far away as Wisconsin.
Each vehicle takes about four to six hours for a complete cleaning and waxing, Behling said.
If you’re wondering why it takes Behling that long for a job you can finish in a half-hour with a garden hose, listen to Marcia Chevaleau, a customer. “He even uses Q-tips on the little vent deals,” said the Lake Bluff resident.
The hours Behling spends on Tracy Lancaster’s Suburban is time Lancaster says he can spend with his family.
“This is like a treat for me,” said Lancaster, a trader in Chicago who lives in Buffalo Grove.
“He does everything–takes the seats out and shampoos the carpet where the kids have dropped food,” he said.
At about $150 twice a year, Lancaster said the cleaning is worth it.
“Most busy people that have nice cars don’t have time to sit around at a carwash,” said Autobath’s Gibson.
Autobath charges from $20 for a simple wash to about $200 for a full cleaning, waxing and detailing.
A job takes from 45 minutes to three hours for the whole works. The company services the Chicago area; $15 extra for more distant house calls.
Brian Nix is a busy person. Besides working in the Chicago Bulls’ marketing department, Nix is in law school.
Still, he wants his BMW clean. And for $100 a month, Autobath will drive to the United Center eight times a month to wash his car and wax it once.
Gibson acknowledges this kind of service isn’t for everyone. And chances are, if you don’t use words like “revitalize” when describing a car cleaning, as Gibson does, it may not be for you.
The lube job
Every other Wednesday, a truck tows a 24-foot trailer to the Allstate Insurance Co. headquarters in Northbrook.
In the parking lot, the trailer is opened. The side wall becomes an awning, and the back is opened to reveal a ramp onto which vehicles can be pulled into the trailer.
Some three dozen employees head to work after handing their keys to the two-man Lube At Work team. For $24, Lube At Work drains and replaces oil, replaces the oil filter, lubes the front end, checks and, if needed, adds brake, transmission, steering and windshield-washer fluids, cleans the windshield and checks tire pressure.
For more money, customers can have additional work done. For example, for $12 more the company will rotate tires and inspect the brakes.
Each vehicle takes about 10 minutes to service. For employees at companies such as Allstate and nearby Andersen Consulting, the service takes none of their time.
“My car sits in the parking lot anyway,” said Mike Moran, who works at Allstate. “If I didn’t have this, I’d wind up doing it on Saturday.”
Charles Serlin, who helped found the company two years ago, said the service is a perk that businesses can easily offer. “There are a lot of programs (benefits) at companies for people with families or who work full-time. This costs the company nothing and is for everybody.”
Many apparently agree, as Lube At Work has grown from one trailer servicing about 350 vehicles a month to four trailers servicing 3,000 a month at more than 40 companies and about a dozen fleet accounts.
Glass
As careful as you are with your car, a time may come when you hear a ping that can mean only one thing: a pebble has struck your windshield. If that ping leaves a pockmark, it will turn into a large crack, not to mention a bill for more than $1,000 for a new windshield, unless you act quickly.
For 25 years, Bernie Bass at Northshore Novus has been driving to homes and businesses to fix small cracks before they grow into something that can’t be fixed. John Pink has been running the same kind of business, Star Technology Windshield Repair, from his Des Plaines home for nine years.
“I’m like a dentist for a window,” said Bass. “I spot a cavity and fill it with an acrylic chemical to prevent it from spreading.”
Depending on how many “cavities” have to be filled, the service ranges from about $35 to $75. Pink said each call, in which he injects epoxy into a tiny crack in the windshield, takes less than an hour.
He said the repair is largely invisible, leaving a mark about the size of a pencil dot.
Pink and Bass said insurance companies value the service so much they often will waive the client’s deductible and pay the whole bill. “They figure we’ve just saved them over $1,000,” said Pink.
Sound systems
If you can’t stand the sound of silence long enough to drive someplace to get a stereo installed, Sound Experience will come to you. Not only that, but it also can install an alarm system, radar detector and keyless entry system or change a car phone.
Rick Deutsch, a manager who oversees installations for the Northbrook-based company, said it doesn’t cost any more to have someone from the company come to you anywhere in the Chicago area.
Sound systems and installation range from $179 to $799. A security system will run you from $169 to $599.
If you choose a more elaborate sound system–some can run as high as $30,000–you must go to one of the company’s four locations, Deutsch said.
