MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Auto glass repair shops in Memphis aren’t getting a break when it comes to replacing windows from car burglaries and thefts.
Don Gentry with Gentry Glass said he gets 5-10 calls a day from victims who need repairs done to their vehicles. He said when a break-in causes the damage, it’s a lot of work.
“Most of the time, you are cleaning up the glass that goes everywhere,” Gentry said. “For each door glass that gets broken, you are pretty much looking at an hour’s time. If you have eight people call you and say, hey, my glass is broken, you’ve got 8 hours of work there.”
Jack Morris Auto Glass on Union said their phones never stop ringing.
“It seems like every morning a couple of apartment complexes are hit, or a section of a neighborhood is hit, and someone calls us and says, hey, I’ve got five or six more people who are about to call you,” said Buck Morris.
To make matters worse, some auto glass shops are dealing with an auto glass shortage nationwide.
“I have an Equinox. I can’t get a windshield for my car right now,” said Karen Sears with Jack Morris Auto Glass.
Jack Morris Auto Glass said they are lucky because they have a large inventory of vehicle glass.
Gentry said it’s nearly impossible to find a side window for a Kia, which happens to be one of vehicles car thieves are after right now.
“I don’t think there is any Kia door glass out there anywhere,” Gentry said. ‘I had some people call about a Kia Optima, and I went to my vendors nationwide, and there were like three in the whole country.”
He said another car owner with a Kia Cloud had to go all the way to Nashville to find some glass.
“There are some companies going after these salvage yards like ‘Pull-A-Part’ and grabbing every used window they can get,” Gentry said.
The shops replacing the glass from vehicle break-ins said their customers are coming from all over the Memphis area.
Memphis police report the city is averaging about 500 car break-ins a month.
