CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Southside KRIS 6 News reporter, Tony Jaramillo asked Taryn Hunter, owner of Chip Stop and Ron Parker, owner of Iron Cross Auto Glass about how many cars a week they service.
I would say in a week about 100 cars," Hunter said.
"I would probably say anywhere between 15-25 for just chip repairs," Parker said.
Hunter gave reasons as to why they have so many windshield repair customers.
"I think it has a lot to do with the geography and us being a coastal city, all the small towns around us, people coming in, so we get the traffic, and debris on the road," Hunter said.
Parker said he has been in almost every state in the U.S. and only Corpus Christi cracks this specific list.
"The only place I've gotten a chip is in Corpus," Parker said.
"I've had people come from Canada come all the way across the country, as soon as they get to Corpus, "'Wack!'" Hunter said.
Both repairmen gave a few locations that they believe are hot spots for this issue.
"Anything between Flour Bluff and the Island. Anything by 37 out by the refineries," Parker said.
"I've heard people sitting at the stoplight and rocks coming off of SPID and hitting their windshield while they're there parked," Hunter said.
Both said the price of replacing windshields is going up due to advanced technology in newer vehicles.
"When I started there was one windshield for 12 vehicles. Now, you've got upwards of 50 windshields for one vehicle," Parker said.
Highways like SPID and I-37 are maintained by TxDOT. Public Information Officer for TxDOT, Rickey Dailey, said there is street-sweeping maintenance on their roads.
"We sweep our main lanes two times a month. We sweep our frontage roads once a month. The rocks that most of the people see on the roads are not coming from our roadways. The roadways are not losing their rocks," Dailey said.
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