Rough winter means busy season for auto body shops in Halifax

HALIFAX – It’s been a busy winter for Halifax auto body shops as icy roads have left many motorists facing problems ranging from smashed-up vehicles to mechanical issues.

For several weeks, drivers have had to use caution when driving on bumpy, rut-riddled side streets.

“This year’s probably worse than any I can remember in probably the past eight, nine, 10 years,” said Glen Gordon, the body shop manager at Wolf Collision. “It’s mainly front-end hits or someone that has been rear-ended.”

He said bad roads and snowbanks have been the main cause of the damage.

Nikki D’Eon suffered damage to her car after a sidewalk plow dumped ice in her driveway and she couldn’t avoid it on a slippery entrance.

“A chunk of ice was there and hit the side of my car and now I have lovely hole in the passenger side in my door,” she said.

The narrow streets are also making it difficult to manoeuvre a vehicle, which is leading to mirrors being broken, according to Gordon.

“All kinds of mirrors. I can average painting four or five mirrors a day,” he said.

Mechanics are working as hard as the shops doing repairs under vehicles.

“We’ve been pretty busy,” said Cecil Greencorn, the owner of C. & A. Automotive. “Broken brake lines, plastic bumpers being broke — we do a lot of that too.”

But that’s not the only mechanical problems Greencorn and his mechanics are seeing. Other issues are cropping up due to drivers having to traverse heavy ice and bumpy roads.

“We’ve had strut problems,” he said. “We had three cars last week with broken springs and shocks.”

Gordon said the most damaged vehicles take priority.

“What we generally try to do is fix cars that, right now, are not drivable and the other people do understand,” he said. “They don’t mind waiting if we can do temporary repairs to their vehicle.”