Marinucci: Garaging car in winter saves time, money

Urging customers to garage their vehicles during the winter months is sage advice that ultimately boosts their loyalty to your tire dealership or service shop.

Garaging vehicles enhances safety as well as saving customers time, money and aggravation — especially in areas where snow, sleet and ice storms commonly occur.

Customers are sure to appreciate these tangible benefits on brutal winter mornings when they already have much on their minds in addition to coping with harsh weather.

For example, remember that clearing snow from a vehicle and scraping its windows is more than just an annoyance to many motorists.

Rather, it is a time-consuming, stressful and potentially hazardous exercise to perform on frigid winter mornings.

Due to the size and height of many newer vehicles, for example, a motorist may need a step ladder or step stool in order to reach the windshield and rear window with an ice scraper.

(I cannot speak for my readers, but I never have heard a "height-challenged" person speak fondly of time spent scraping windshields while perched on a step ladder.)

Putting a vehicle into a garage or under car port has been routine procedure for countless car owners across the country. Amazingly, however, other motorists have not prioritized this wintertime procedure for various reasons.

Many service personnel have told me that a neighborly nudge may motivate motorists to take this simple but meaningful step. They also emphasized that the most-common customer reaction has been a sheepish admission that the garage or car port actually is overdue for a cleanup.

Later, some customers also concede that a service writer's or technician's recommendation embarrassed them into performing a much-needed cleanup. Their families thanked them for the effort because it made their lives easier, too.

Simply garaging a vehicle or parking it inside a car port cannot solve every winter weather challenge. But protecting a vehicle — even with the partial cover of a car port — certainly minimizes those winter hassles.

Let me recap the key benefits.

First and foremost, protecting the vehicle's windows from all or most of the elements enhances safety by improving driver visibility. Any motorist who has battled snow, sleet and/or ice understands that clear windows improve safety and reduce stress during winter driving.

Today's defrosting systems can do an impressive job of melting snow and ice. What is more, modern cooling systems help an engine reach operating temperature as quickly as practically possible.

Bringing an engine up to operating temperature does more than warm a passenger compartment. It also enhances overall engine performance and reduces tailpipe emissions.

Mind you, every one of your customers may not be driving vehicles fitted with the latest technologies, but protecting a vehicle from ice and snow —– regardless of its age — gives a defrosting system a head start on its tasks. It is easier for any defroster to maintain clear windows than it is to melt existing layers of snow and ice first, then combat whatever precipitation is occurring.

The proverbial "clean-window" head start also reduces the number of porthole-peering people trying to navigate snowy, icy roads. I am referring to the careless car owner who takes no such precautions.

This woefully unprepared motorist also lacks an adequate ice scraper and a squirt bottle of an effective deicing spray.

After creating a single, small porthole-like clearing on the vehicle's large windshield, this driver heads for the highways. As far as he or she is concerned, the porthole view will have to suffice until the defroster clears the windshield.

Personally, I find the porthole-peering scenario to be frightening.

Garaging a vehicle saves time in several ways. For example, the car owner does not need to clear snow from the vehicle and scrape its windows.

Furthermore, some winter storms dump enough precipitation that a car owner needs maximum available heat in order to thaw a vehicle's windows.

Consequently, the motorist runs the engine until it reaches operating temperature, then continues to operate the defroster for as long as needed to clear the windows adequately.

Warming up an engine takes more than a minimal amount of time — it also wastes fuel. Gasoline costs money and its price has been rising for months now.

To the best of my knowledge, simply driving a vehicle warms up an engine more effectively than idling it in park or neutral.

However, driving off is unworkable when the windshield is crusted over with snow and/or ice.

Motorists sometimes overlook the potential time and cost savings a garage may provide. Generally speaking, a relatively warm storage space for a vehicle is a big asset during brutal winter weather.

Gross simplification: The warmer the garage, the quicker the engine reaches operating temperature when the owner drives away.

The quicker the engine warms up, the faster the vehicle's defroster can clear windows well enough for good visibility.

And, the quicker an engine warms up, the less fuel wasted solely on the warm-up process.

Last but not least, I want to share some of the winter temperature measurements I have made with professional-grade digital thermometers. Over the years, I have compared the outdoor air temperature on a wintry day or night with the temperature inside a common garage.

OK, a garage may be attached to a home or standing alone. It may be a brick, stone, block or wooden structure. It may — or may not — have any substantial insulation in it.

Based on my tests, an unheated garage that was closed up overnight may measure 10 to 20 degrees (F) warmer than the outside air.

Inside a garage attached to a house, the temperature may be 10 to 25 degrees warmer than the temperature outdoors.

I do not pretend to be a scientific expert, but these measurements seem to support personal experiences. That is, simply getting a vehicle out of windy and/or inclement conditions may matter more than we realized — even if the garage or storage area is not heated.

The bottom line is that service personnel help customers when they recommend practical ways to cope with severe winter temperatures, snow, sleet and ice.

In some situations, taking advantage of a garage or car port is appropriate. In other cases, car covers and engine block heaters may provide a minimal amount of protection.

At the very least, sending an email or text-message advisory to customers about winter precautions is a prudent, neighborly gesture.