Do department vehicles get maintained by......

[MD11pilot]

the PD's own mechanics or do they contract the work to a trusted shop? my car is due in for a oil change soon and that made me wander about squad cars. Also does the department give you money to gas it up and wash it? Or that's also done by maintenance?

[Guams]

Our squads are maintained by the local Ford dealership mechanics. Fueling is in the department budget and each squad is assigned a gas card that gets used to fill'er up. Washing the squads is patrol's responsibility... Everyone should be washing the squads when it's needed, but I've found that only myself and the other vampires wash them.

[PABear31]

It all depends on the particular agency. Some city PDs have enough vehicles
that the employment of mechanics just for city vehicles is a cost effective measure. However, if you did a survey I think that you will find that most police and sheriff's departments have either too few vehicles or have their cars too widely dispursed to deal exclusively with their own mechanics.

[Unit453]

me wander about squad cars

You mean wonder?

Our fleet is maintained by either Ford for warranty work or our mechanics but mostly inmates that are over seen by our mechanics for routine stuff. Since we have our own mechanics, our sheriff's department services around 700 fleet vehicles.

[nasa808]

1. DPW does the grunt of the work. If they can not fix it, it goes to the local Ford dealer.

2. We have a gas pump in the rear of PHQ

3. We have a contract with the local Car Wash.

[phillyrube]

Mostr of our cars are under warranty, so they go to the dealer. Minor maintenance and PMs go to the city garage. We used to have our oil changes and stuff done at Jiffylube, since they charge $30.00 or so and the garage was charging 150.00 for the same service. Now the garage is funded differently.

[PhilipCal]

My Department has an Auto Shop at various posts throughout the state. Preventive maintenance, even major repairs are handled there. Vehicle needs new tires, it gets them at the Auto Shop. The mechanics are state employees. Each Trooper is issued a gas card, which is actually assigned to the vehicle. It can be used throughout the state.

[Big Red]

My city has a fleet division that does repairs and maintenance for all city vehicles, police cars, fire trucks, garbage trucks etc... and they SUCK! Takes at least 3 trips to fleet to get even a minor problem fixed. (Just sent my car in to get new blinkers because mine died, they only replaced the right, now I have to send it back again to get the left done...) If Autozone was open on graves Id just do it myself out of my own pocket to avoid dealing with those halfwits.

Patrol is also responsible for washing the cars, our dept has contracts with a few local washes, but none are open on graves, so swings and days have to do it. My old car was shared by two of us graves guys on opposite days, so it never got cleaned.

[stormz5192]

1. DPW does the grunt of the work. If they can not fix it, it goes to the local Ford dealer.

2. We have a gas pump in the rear of PHQ

3. We have a contract with the local Car Wash.

Pretty much what he said. We have like 5 mechanics. Pumps at the Twp garage and (3) car washes on contract.

[IBTP711]

We have a central fleet that fixes all county owned vehicles. Bad thing about this is that sometimes you can wait a little while to get your car back if you dont have a scheduled appointment. As far as gas goes, we have tons of pumps all around the county at different county owned facilities (police stations, fire houses, public works facilities, etc). We dont have any contracts with car washes but we generally get good deals from some of the locals, so it works out.

[kckpd756]

Our Fleet services handles all aspects of the maintenance, unless the vehicle is under warranty then it goes back to the dealership. We have a large fuel depot there as well as an onsight car wash. One of our substations also has a fuel pump.

[DARE_SUPPORTER]

We have whats called ARI, it has a huge listed of big name places to take the vehicle to get service work done, it is up to us the officers to keep the maintenance up on them, obviously we dont pay for anything out of pocket it all gets charged to ARI.

As for gas of course the dept pays that, we have a credit card assigned to the vehicle and you have to put the vehicle mileage in at fill up and a pass code that ever officer has assigned to them, to use the credit card.

As for washing the vehicle we normally just go to a gas station a get a car wash on the gas credit card at fill up, I do that if my trailblazer is nasty other than that I normally clean it on my off day, it gives me something to do, unless its cold. LOL

[Lawfficer]

My agency employs mechanics to maintain our vehicles. We also have gas pumps at all the patrol stations. The city contracts with a company to come hand wash our vehicles at the station.

[ateamer]

All of our county-operated vehicles are maintained by county employees. They only go to the dealership for highly unusual things that our mechanics can't fix, and they go to a body shop for bent metal.

[5031OKC]

In my city we have a Fleet Maintenance division that handles the maintenance on all city vehicles (patrol cars, street maintenance vehicles, heavy equipment, etc.). The only exception is the fire department, who has their own maintenance division. Our mechanics as a whole seem to be pretty good. Very rarely do I have to take anything back for a second visit.
Body work is subbed out to one of several different body shops/dealerships, depending on what needs done.