Mobile Car Detailing Edmonton – What to Expect

Mobile Car Detailing Edmonton – What to Expect

If you’ve ever thought, “Where can I get professional car detailing that comes to me in Edmonton?” this episode’s for you. Today we’re speaking with Stephane Gautron, owner of Starfleet Mobile Detailing and Edmonton’s go-to expert in mobile auto care. We’re breaking down what mobile car detailing includes, how it works, and why more drivers and businesses in Edmonton are choosing this convenient service to keep their vehicle spotless year-round. All right, I’ll jump right into the Questions!

What Is Mobile Car Detailing?

Question number one: what exactly is mobile car detailing, and how does it work for drivers here in Edmonton?

Well, basically we go to the customer, so we have vans that are fully equipped with all that we need— all the machinery, the extractor, the pressure washer, the water, the everything we need — and so that when we go to your house or to your job site we can tackle everything that we encounter.

All right, so let’s talk about that a little bit: what is included in a full mobile detailing package, and how does it compare to going to a shop? Shop we try to have all the services possible that you would get at a shop. We have a shop, so it’s not like we’re just strictly mobile, but we do have a shop, and we have the same equipment in our vans that we do at the shop. Now, that being said, we don’t do polishing on a mobile unless you have maybe like a garage or something we can work out of, because we don’t want to be out in the sunlight and wind and dust affecting the polish. So I would be very weary of anybody offering to just polish your car in your driveway, because all it takes is a little bit of sand or whatever that blows onto the surface as you’re polishing and you’ll have nice scratches.

How Long Does Mobile Detailing Take?

So how long does mobile detailing usually take, and do you need anything from the customer like water or power access? To detail a vehicle it takes anywhere from two hours and up, depending on what it is. If it’s really dirty, if it’s a big vehicle, we don’t do much maintenance mobile because it’s just not worth it for us to to drive somewhere just to do a vacuum and and a wipe down, so we don’t do those mobile. If you want to bring it to our shop, sure, we’ll do it; that’ll take about an hour and a half. It’s hard to do much faster than that, just because I’ve never really seen a car that that has like a light dusting — usually there’s some kind of dirt involved — so it’s hard to do any quicker than that.

As far as water and power, we try to bring on water unless there’s a lot of pressure washing involved. If that’s the case, then we’ll tap into the owner’s water. A lot of people are concerned, “Oh, you know, like, you’re using my, of my water, and so can I get a discount?” But if you look at your bill, we, we use maybe 10 cents of water. Like, water is very cheap; if it wasn’t, you’d be screaming and hollering to your mayor about the cost of water, because, yeah, it, like, to do a bathtub it’s like 20 cents or 15 cents — like, it’s not expensive.

And as far as power, we do have our generators; we always bring those with us, but we prefer to use the owners’, just because we’re all worried about the planet, right? We want to reduce our carbon footprint, so why would we want to use a generator, burn fuel, when we can tap into the owner’s electricity? And then, once again, we’re, you know, we might use 10 cents of electricity — like, it’s just so minimal it’s not even part of the equation. But, no, we do go self-contained; we ask the customer usually if we can tap into, into their, their house for that. When it goes, when we go to a company, well, we always use their, their electricity and water.

Do You Detail Commercial and Personal Vehicles?

All right, can you walk us through your most popular detailing service for personal vehicles in Edmonton, seeing as you are a professional car detailing company in Edmonton? Yeah, so basically when we do a premium detailing it’s inside the vehicle, and you can add on the exterior if you want — it’s not included — and the reason why is most people go to the car wash quite regularly, do it on their own; they’ll go through the car wash or they’ll do a wand wash — cost them, you know, $5, whatever, $10 — and then, when they want the interior done, that’s when they call us. So it’s more professional, the, the results, than doing it yourself, especially in the spring after the winter has did a number on your car interior; that’s usually when it comes to.

So how does mobile detailing work for fleet vehicles in commercial clients around the city of Edmonton? Well, when we do fleet vehicles, the, the big difference is the kind of dirt we’re dealing with. Fleet vehicles — like, let’s say we’re talking about crew cabs — and the crew cabs, they use that for construction, and depending on where the construction is you’ll have mud, sometimes concrete, sawdust, and the vehicles are usually pretty dirty because they haul workers and the workers get in there and they dirty up everything. But that’s not always the case; sometimes it can be a manager’s truck where it’s just the driver area is dirty and the rest isn’t too bad.

Does Starfleet Detail Semi-Trucks?

And then we also do transportation trucks, like semi-trucks, which is a totally different thing. So now we’re dealing with a little hotel room on wheels: you got the bed and you have the fridge and the microwave, you got some cabinet, sometimes you have two beds, bunk beds in there, so it’s very different. But when people call us to do these semi-trucks, these transportation haulers, they are basically changing drivers for the most part, and so, just like a hotel room, you want to feel like the place has been disinfected before you go in there, right?

Gotcha. Are there any seasonal considerations for mobile detailing in Edmonton, like winter salt, spring pollen, or summer dust? In the spring the biggest concern is the winter salt; they want to get that salt out of their, the carpets, and a lot of times too the seeds get dirty during the winter time. It’s kind of you’re getting in with your car, you got your coffee, you got a big jacket on, and it’s kind of awkward — spills happen — so they want to get rid of that. The pollen and the dust, that I’ve, I’ve never really had anybody call us and say, “I want you to dust our car.” It’s always been major; they, they want a full detail on the inside, and that’s what we, we do. I’m sure there’s other companies out there that do the lighter detailing, but for us the, the majority is, is that, the heavy duty lifting.

What Is The Best Time of Year For Mobile Detailing?

So what time of year is best for mobile car detailing if we’re going to go to somebody’s house? The best is when it’s still above, I would say, 7 °C. If it goes below that, then it’s an issue. If you have a garage and it’s heated, then we can do it inside the garage, but it limits us to the exterior wash. So if it’s a light exterior wash we could do it inside your garage. We, we have what we call a waterless wash, and so it’s very light on excess water — so there’s no pressure washing; it’s all hand wash. We have a product that we use that u has polymers in there that kind of entrap the dirt, but we’re talking about light, like dust; we’re not talking about built up mud, and so we can do that no problem.

And apart from that, yeah, temperature is the biggest thing. Of course, if it’s raining it’s an issue. When we go to a company we have usually a bay to work out of, so that’s not an issue, but residential is a little bit more tricky when it comes to mobile detailing.

What Is a Full Paint Decontamination?

All right, so what’s the difference between an exterior wash and full paint decontamination or waxing? Well, a wash is basically the wash you’re imagining — you’re taking soap, water, you’re washing the exterior of your vehicle — but when you’re doing a paint decontamination, now you’re attacking or trying to get rid of things that shouldn’t be there normally. So we’re talking about sap, could be tar, could be rail dust which is basically filaments of metal that stick to the paint, and what happens is that with the moisture they start to rust and that starts to tack the paint and can stain it. Especially notice it’s noticeable on a white car; you might not see it on a dark car but it’s there. So if you look at a white car and you finish washing it and you look at it and you still see little specks — most of the time it’s red little specks — that’s rail dust.

And to take that off we use a sulfur-based cleaner, and what it does, it reacts with the rust and it helps to kind of unglue, I guess you could say, the little pieces of metal from the paint, from your clear coat. And then once that’s off, then you can clay bar it, or you could, what we usually recommend is to do a quick polish; it’ll just take off a little layer from the clear coat, get rid of any staining that might be there from the rail dust. And it also, if you’ve had sap, sap is really bad for your paint; what it does, it’s almost like mold where it kind of grows roots and it starts to eat into the clear coat, and then as you’re trying to take that off you’ll notice underneath the t, the the sap, once you remove that, you’ll have little pits and that’s pitting inside your, the clear coat. So we need to polish that out as best as possible, and ideally, if you’re, if you really want to protect your clear coat, it’s good if you’ve had that issue: polish it and then put a ceramic coating on it. The ceramic coating fills in those little pits and it prevents more damage from extending into those that damage, like, it’s, it fills it in, and ceramic coating is, is permanent, and so it’s kind of like a clear coat, not quite, but in layman’s terms that that’s how I would describe it.

Does Starfleet Detailing Do Interior And Exterior Services?

Okay, now, question number eight is: do you offer interior only or exterior only detailing services, and what problems do those help solve? We do interior only — not a problem, we’ll do that, we do that day in, day out. The exterior only, that’s if you going to get a polish or ceramic coating, then, yeah, we can do that as well. Okay, yeah, the problems, I mean, when it’s, you say the problems that those help solve, I mean it, I think other than the actual work it solves the issue of having to bring your car somewhere, so we go to you, right, and so it’s very convenient to the customer.

Okay, now, number nine asks: what are some common mistakes that people make between detailing appointments that you wish they would avoid? I guess if they have spills, bring it right away; don’t wait. I’ve had some people think that it’s no big deal, I’ll get to it eventually, but what happens if you’re, let’s say, you spill a coffee and it’s got milk and you spill it, you don’t wipe it — like, you need to wipe it right away with something. So if you have nothing to wipe and it kind of penetrates the carpet, seeps into the underbatting, and then it starts to grow bacteria, and then all a sudden your car smells really bad and it’ll not go away — I’m telling you right now, it will not go away. Every time moisture gets in there it will just regenerate everything.

So what happens then: we have to go in with special products to kill any type of, of growth that’s in there. We have a product for that and it works 100% of the time, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s expensive; it’s not a cheap product, and so if you have to tackle any type of spill you’re not going to be happy with the bill.

Why Choose Starfleet Detailing in Edmonton?

Fair enough. Now, for someone who is searching mobile car detailing near me in Edmonton, why should they choose Starfleet Detailing? We’ve been around for more than 7 years and we’re able to tackle any problem we encounter. A lot of people come to us because they’re trying to resolve a problem; it could be biohazard, drug remediation, it could be smells, and they’ve tried other things. Most people try it on their own; they’ll go to Canadian Tire and buy some kind of product thinking, “Okay, this will get rid of the smell or get rid of the stain,” and then they just end up wasting money or damaging their car surfaces.

So I would say it doesn’t hurt; just give us a call, we’ll give you an estimate of what’s going to cost, and we’re not expensive. If you compare us to other professionals — and I’m talking about Starfleet Detailers, I’m just talking about professional shops — we are probably one of the cheapest out there. We like to give people value for the money; we’re not out there to take advantage of people. We’re a professional service and we grow, we’re growing, and we’re actually franchising across the country for a reason, and it’s because we give value for, for your money.

Awesome, well, thanks so much Stephane for letting us know all about mobile detailing in Edmonton, and if anybody is looking for a good mobile detailing for their vehicles — whether you are a, you have a fleet or you have even a few vehicles in your fleet, or just, you know, someone who wants their, their vehicle to, to look and smell its best — contact Starfleet Detailing.

Hey, thanks so much, man. We’ll see you next time.

Yeah, no problem. Thank you.