The auto body fillers of Sanford

Dec. 20--SANFORD -- Have you ever wondered who the men were who help restore your car after a collision or rough encounters with debris on the road?

Trey Powers, owner of Powers Automotive & Body on Olivia Road, does business with several of the car dealers and insurance companies in the Sanford area. He and his crew help fix automobiles. The automobile industry relies heavily on these auto body shops to help with the overflow of repair needs.

Powers spoke to the Herald about how his business operates.

Where does your client base come from?

A lot of car dealers and individuals in this country block really help us out. We have about six car dealers that we do work for and that's about 60 percent of our business. We mostly do minor damage repair.

What kind of services do you provide?

Mainly just auto body light repair, we fix collisions. We don't really do much restoration work. It's more just newer stuff. A lot of late model cars. We do a lot of Hondas for the Sanford Honda and just in general. It seems like there's a lot of Hondas around here.

What sort of training did you have to go through?

I actually was just born and raised in the business. I've been doing it ever since I was in school.

At what point is a car not repairable?

Most of the time if there's real bad frame damage or if there is a bad rollover, like the roof is caved in or things of that nature. That will usually total them out.

How long does each job take?

Minor repair, which is usually like a bump in the fender of about two pounds, usually takes two to three days. The reason it takes that long is because of the drying time. After we repair something the primer has to dry and after we sand it and paint it, the paint has to dry. So two to three days are where a lot of our jobs are. Small jobs.

What is one of the most difficult tasks?

I'd say painting anything that's real big. I'm mainly a painter. My body guys do the repairing and I do the painting so any big four-door trucks and stuff like that those are pretty tough. Time consuming.

What's the biggest work you have had to do?

Probably paint a bus. We've done an airplane. I've painted an airplane before and I've only done that one.

As far as painting what sort of work do you do?

Mainly a lot of stock stuff. We have done some race cars in the past, but I have some people come in and help me do some of the graphics and stuff like that. We do most of the work then they just do the airbrushing and then we will finish it up.

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