Mobile Fleet Detailing Edmonton: Can Detailing Really Make Your Car Brand New Again?

Mobile Fleet Detailing Edmonton: Can Detailing Really Make Your Car Brand New Again?

Your car is likely your second biggest investment after your home. So why do most people treat it like a garbage can on wheels?

Today we’re sitting down with Edmonton’s detailing expert Stefan Gautron of Starfleet Detailing to expose the truth about car detailing. Why it matters more than you think. How it protects your investment and why you should never DIY. If you drive in Alberta, this is a must watch.

Why Car Detailing Matters More Than You Think

Whether you’re driving through harsh Edmonton winters or baking under summer UV rays, your car takes a beating. But with the right detailing approach, you can extend your vehicle’s life, preserve its resale value, and honestly just feel better every time you get behind the wheel.

I’m here with Stefan Gorron, the owner of Starfleet Detailing, Edmonton’s go-to for mobile vehicle detailing. And today, he’s answering the questions every car owner should be asking.

So, let’s kick it off. What’s the biggest myth people believe about car detailing? And what’s the truth?

The biggest myth is that just having your car detailed will make it look like new.

Okay, it might , but if you’ve neglected it for 10 years and then you finally detail it once, it’s not going to look new and all the damages are there. It’ll look good for a couple hours. If you really want to preserve the look of your car, you have to get it detailed regularly. What’s regular?

In Canada, the minimum is once a year. The minimum. Twice is better.

Okay, fair enough. Now, why is mobile detailing especially valuable in a city like Edmonton with our extreme weather conditions?

Well, with our winters, the problem with our winters is either if you’re like in the east, it’d be salt. Here, it’s a mixture, right? They put sand with salt. So, the salt and the sand get into your carpets and they grind away at the base of the fibers and they chew up the carpet. So, what happens you’ll see that especially if you’re using mats that are carpet instead of rubber. You’ll notice that it just gets the fibers just disappear and then you get down to the mesh there and it destroys them.

And the same can happen to your car on the sides. So you have your bats and on the sides there it’ll get embedded with salts and sands and it’ll start chewing it up and if it doesn’t chew it up then it converts back to rock. So it becomes another solid and you can’t get rid of it. You almost have to chip it out.

The Hidden Damage of Skipping Detailing

Okay. So what are some of the other long-term effects of skipping professional detailing for a year or more?

Odors. You’ll eventually have this weird funky smell in your car. I don’t know what it is. And it’s basically food that’s been decomposing. And you know, making your home there, making your car their home. And the only way to get rid of that is to detail it. And in some extreme cases, we have a product that will basically neutralize it.

And we recommend that to problematic cars that the smell won’t go away.

Okay. So, let’s talk a little bit about that right there. What do you have for getting rid of those stubborn odors? You know, that funky car smell. What do you get for that?

Well, we have a special product that destroys on a molecular level the organics. So, we can’t use it on silk. We can’t use it on cotton. Wool’s not an issue in a car. leather, we can’t use it on leather.

It has to be put on there for a certain amount of time and wiped off. You can’t leave it on. Whereas you can leave the product on plastics and vinyls. And what it does is it basically kills the cell and renders it so it doesn’t produce odors anymore. And so it’s very effective. It’s 100% effective actually. We can guarantee that.

Okay. So, the only way to get rid of the funky smell in your car is by calling Starfleet.

Does Detailing Increase Resale Value?

Now, let’s talk about resale and trade-in value. Can detailing actually boost resale and trade-in value? And do buyers care that much about cleanliness?

Oh, they sure do. Just think of yourself when you go to buy a used car. Even if it’s cheap, okay, even though the price is really rock bottom and you go see it and it’s dirty and grimy, you’re like, “I don’t think so, right?” You don’t, it’s just a turnoff.

If you go see a car, even if it’s an old car and it’s clean, right away it’s just like it’s impressive. It’s just right away it’s a positive and you want to make the deal go through because you’re, you know, you’re you’re smitten with the car. So, it’s very important to have a clean car.

If you’re going to sell your used car on your own, spend a couple hundred bucks, get it detailed, get it looking nice, and when the buyer comes, they’re going to say, “Hey, this guy takes care of his vehicle.” So, if he’s taking care of the inside, I’m sure he does oil changes. Sure, he does brakes. Might not be true. He might be, his assumption might not be accurate, but at the end, you, the seller, will get top dollar for your sale. So, it’s very, very important to do that.

Okay. Now, what detailing packages or services do you recommend before and after Edmonton’s harsh winter season?

So, as soon as the spring comes, you want to get the premium package, which is the extraction. You want to extract the dirt from your fabrics in your car. So, the premium package is a must. As a matter of fact, we won’t do a maintenance package in the spring. It’s pointless because a maintenance package is just vacuuming of the carpets. It’s not a cleaning of the carpets. And most places are like that. If you want extraction, extraction, half the detail job of an interior is extraction. Okay?

And so if you’re going to, you know, if you’re going to want to skip on paying the premium price for a premium job, you want the maintenance price. Well, you’re going to get maintenance results. It’s not going to be, it’s not the right application. You want to maintain something that’s already clean. So, a maintenance package is to keep the cleanliness going. It’s not to bring a dirty vehicle to a clean state. That would be the premium package.

All right. So, a premium package in the spring and then a maintenance package in the fall right before winter. I would say probably September.

Perfect. That sounds great. Now, let’s talk about fleet vehicles.

Fleet Detailing, DIY Risks, and Final Advice

Okay. Commercial use. What’s the return on investment of regular detailing for businesses with work trucks and service vehicles?

There’s no one answer. It depends on the company, the business, how they’re if they’re purchasing the fleets, or they’re leasing them. If they’re purchasing it, then obviously when they go to sell them, they’ll get top dollar on the resale.

When it’s a lease, usually it’s after 4 years. If the vehicle is fairly damaged on the interior, then they will be fined or they’ll be assessed an extra charge.

So, if you want to avoid that, then you maintain it. You’ll save yourself that extra money. But on top of that, it also is a good incentive for your employees to be cleaner and to be more professional. So, it has two. It helps you in two ways, right?

Preserves the vehicle’s value, keeps you from getting charged extra, but your workers step up. When they go into a clean vehicle, it hurts them to, you know, to throw things on the floor or or to, you know, put food down on the armrest and dirty stuff up when it’s all nice and clean. It’s psychological.

They make more of an effort to keep it clean if it is clean. That’s a really great point. You know, if it’s if it’s cleaned and maintained and, you know, it comes from the management down that you know, we keep our vehicles clean, then it’s easier for the staff to follow suit.

Now, is it true that Starfleet is one of the only fleet detailing companies in Edmonton?

we’re the only strictly, and I mean strictly, 95% of our customers are commercial. So, we work mostly with companies, but then we’ll also do well, we have a 10% off for employees of the company. So, we’ll do their car, their personal cars. And when somebody has a problem and they call us up and they say, “Hey, you know, I can’t get rid of the smell or I spilled something. I had somebody last week spill some gas inside their truck.” So, obviously, all the other detailing outfits don’t want to touch that. So people call us and you know, sure, come on in, bring it in your vehicle, we’ll fix it for you.

So our company’s not focusing our attention on what 99% of the rest of our competition does. There’s just no rhyme or reason with the pricing and and and the quality. So we leave that, you know, to those people to fight it out. And we just focus on professionals because they see value. They’re ready to pay for the value and they’re the ones that I find appreciate our service more because we get rid of a headache for them.

for sure. So, that’s what we do. We focus on commercial and it’s been good for us. And when I say we’re I mean, if you look up commercial detailing, we’re number one. If you look up detailing, we’re number one. Why? Because we really stand out on our own. There’s other detailing outfits that will do commercial. Like if you bring a truck to them, it’s like whatever. The vehicle is a vehicle. But that’s not really true because it’s a different issue. If it’s a residential customer, the problem usually is food. Food, maybe smoking. But when it’s commercial, it’s grease and grime and sand and mud and salt and food. So it’s a much bigger problem to tackle and we’re willing to do it. Most places don’t. So that’s what’s helped us grow so much.

Right on.

So commercial fleet vehicles are kind of your specialty. And you know, the other thing that we know about Starfleet is you guys have all of the insurance and liability that covers both yourself and the commercial fleet owners in the event of any damages.

Well, that’s a good point because we are also mobile and we’re definitely the only mobile commercial detailing. Like there’s no argument there. We’re the only ones. If you see a van going around Edmonton for detailing, it’s probably some new outfit because we’ve been in Edmonton for 7 years and we’re the only ones that have professional vans going around town.

But I was going to bring out the point because we go to these big companies. I mean we work with major chains. They’re national chains across Canada and they are very particular with safety and insurance. I mean you can’t just show up there on a whim like they call you up and I’ll be there this afternoon. No, you got to go through you got to get safety training. You got to sign paperwork. It’s a big deal to work for these companies. And that has helped us because once you get into that field of expertise, then you’re the to go person. We get calls from new companies like how’d you hear about us? It’s like oh so and so you used to work for this company and and you know he recommended you because you guys are the you know professional commercial detailers. And so it’s kind of word of mouth as well in that aspect. And so that helps us stand out when it comes to fleet detailing, commercial detailing.

All right. Now, let’s jump to videos online. So, there’s a lot of DIY car cleaning videos online. What’s one thing that people shouldn’t attempt without professional tools or training?

I would say attempt doing it on somebody else’s car. If you’re going to start playing with these different chemicals and tools, play in your own car. Don’t do it on somebody else’s. If you search online all the disaster stories of people ruining other people’s interiors, using the wrong chemicals, for example, there’s some chemicals if you put it on acrylics, it’ll melt it and it’ll go foggy or it’ll actually see a little pitting.

So when you look at your dash and you look at your speedometer, that acrylic right there, it’s very very sensitive to certain chemicals. And there’s other chemicals such as conditioners for vinyl. That one tends to be greasy and you can’t have that on the windows and you can’t have it on clear acrylics. So there’s different chemicals that can work on certain surfaces and you need to know that before you start doing that as a business. You have to know your craft in this specific thing.

Now there’s tools too that you could be using wrong. You could be damaging leather. You could be one thing that I’ve noticed with the extractor handles that are metal, those eventually wear down and they become razor sharp. I’ve seen it damage some fabrics. So, we don’t use those in our shop. All ours have a special plastic that doesn’t create little shards of plastic that can damage surfaces. So those are the only things that we use and there’s no metal extractor tool in our kits. So we feel that that is the best tool for what we’re doing.

Okay. Now interior detailing is a game changer. What is the one service most clients say makes their car feel brand new?

Again, it’s hard to pinpoint the one thing for sure.

Extraction that you do extraction on your fabrics, they all suddenly become bright again. Like you can tell the real color. same thing with you could say with the carpets. And then when it comes to the vinyls on your doors, after a while they get beat up and scratched. So even if you clean it, it still has marks that will make it look whitish. So when we put our conditioner on there, it brings out the color. It evens out the color, darkens it up. Now, that is not a permanent solution, but if you use quality stuff, it’ll last several weeks and, you know, you can reapply it again on your own. Keep it up with that. So those are the two big things.

If you move on to the outside of the vehicle, a polish can go a long ways. There was a truck that we did. It looked almost like it was a cherry red, but it was an old truck. It was like 20 years old, and we polished it and it was a bright orange when we were Oh, yeah.

Before and after pictures, the owner couldn’t believe it. It just brightened that paint right up. You can actually see now it has the metallics in it. You could actually see the reflectives in there and it looked so much nicer than the dull red that it was before. Like you might envision a nice bright red. I know it was like a dull dull red. Like it was almost like burgundy, you know? It really was not the color it was supposed to be. So polish is very effective. If your plastics are dried out, they’re whitish. Obviously treating that will make a big difference.

yeah, that’s probably visually those two things on the inside and those two things on the outside make a big difference.

Okay. Finally, what’s your best advice to anyone in Edmonton who wants their car to look great and last longer?

Do it regularly and call us. We can go to you. You don’t even have to come to us. will go to you as long as you have a place that’s safe to work with the doors open on your car. So, we don’t work off the street. It’s not safe. And for us, safety is a big deal because we are commercial. And so, we always have to think about safety. So, if we’re going to go to your house, we’re not going to do it on the street.

We can’t work with the doors open. It’s not going to work. So, that’s your situation and bring it to us. But other than that, we can go to you pretty well anywhere. And we do excellent service. That’s why we have such a good rating and that’s why we’re still around.

just the other day I was looking at some companies in Edmonton and it’s interesting that almost every year we lose half the businesses in detailing and it’s replaced by another new batch. And so there’s always this big turnaround in detailing and it’s a hard field to get into because everything is really stacked against you. First of all, you’re trying to learn on your own instead of going to work for a detail shop. And then you don’t have the right tools because you don’t have enough money to buy professional tools. And then you might have some bad experiences cuz you don’t know what you’re doing. Then you get bad ratings and it’s just like everything’s against you.

but yeah, I think if you are looking for a good job other than calling us, call somebody that has been around for a while. You know, I would say several years. That would be my recommendation.

That’s good advice. Get your vehicle detailed from someone who has been in the trade for a number of years. Someone like Starfleet Detailing Edmonton. They’re, you know, you guys are one of the top, one of the best in the city and in the surrounding areas. So, folks, if you’re looking for a detail, you heard it right from Stefan here. don’t go to these, you know, fly by night guys who are offering you a really good deal. go to somebody who has the experience, who has the track record that they have, plus insurance, because if your vehicle gets wrecked or someone gets hurt while detailing your vehicle, you want to make sure that you’re covered.

All right, guys. Thanks so much for joining us on the channel. We’ll see you in the next video.