Shorter McHenry trips due to COVID are hard on your car, truck or SUV

Before COVID, you would get out on the highway, away from McHenry, and open up the throttle of that car, truck or SUV you drive. But, since the pandemic, you just don’t seem to get out as much. When you do leave the house, it’s generally a short trip – to the grocery store or maybe for a cup of coffee at The Hidden Pearl. Highway drives seem to belong to a by-gone era.

This is a different kind of driving for your car, truck or SUV. Confined primarily to the McHenry area, there are times when you don’t even seem to crank the speedometer above 40 mph anymore. This effects your vehicle. It can tell that you don’t have the same travel patterns as before the pandemic.

With those shorter rides, otherwise known as ‘city driving,’ you stop and go more often. You’re putting more wear and tear on the brakes and the transmission. And those city roads are usually not in as good of shape as highway routes outside of McHenry. That’s not to say anything bad about how the city maintains its roads. It’s just that cities have more traffic. The roads take more of a pounding.

With rougher roads, your car, truck or SUV steering and suspension take more of a beating. The net effect is that the steering and suspension parts wear faster.

Getting out on the highway is good for your car, truck or SUV engine, too. When you hit the gas and ‘open ‘er up,’ you blow some of the carbon buildup out of the engine. But, with city driving, you don’t have a chance to blow the carbon out of the engine the way you would otherwise.

Vehicle pickup and dropoff service allows you to maintain social distancing

With the ‘experts’ telling us to maintain social distancing, you may feel wary of bringing your car into the auto repair shop where you’ll go into the waiting room with other people having work done on their car, truck or SUV. Not a problem.

Qualified auto repair shops are offering pickup and dropoff service during the pandemic. They come out to your home, pickup your vehicle, bring it back to the shop for service or repairs, and then return it to your home for dropoff. In the process, they ensure that sanitary safety procedures are followed.

If you’re working at home, you can just keep working. If you’re relaxing, just keep on relaxing – enjoying that McHenry summer.

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