O'FALLON, Mo. — It's going to be one "hail" of a sale... and it's not the first time Travers Auto has had to sell off storm-damaged inventory.
"I've been through probably four or five in the past 30 years I've been doing this," Owner Glenn Travers tells 5 On Your Side.
Of those storms, Thursday's hail tops the list at either the first or second most damaging storm for his company, Travers Automotive & RV. Travers said a hailstorm years ago that hit the original shop in Florissant might be the biggest.
While possibly not the biggest, Thursday's storm still racked up quite the damage report. "About 350 pieces and everything got touched to some degree," Travers says of the cars, trucks and RVs on the O'Fallon lot.
"The cars have been damaged more significantly than the RVs," explains Travers, "so we expect to probably only have 20% of the cars still on the lot that we'll fix, the rest will go to auction."
Even with insurance, Travers says it's a loss on the car side, "we don't want to sell a product that is not safe or has too much damage. And we don't really want to repair the cars if it is extensive."
Travers does run a body shop and it is also in O'Fallon, "we're unbelievably busy and probably have a four month list of customers right now and it's growing every day."
The RV side of his lot is a little different. "We're literally selling RVs right now at thousands of dollars in discounts," Travers said.
Some of the RVs look fine from the ground level, but a bird's eye view paints a different picture. On their roofs, some have shattered solar panels, broken vents and even punctures. Travers says those will have a more "significant decrease in price."
Insurance adjusters have spent hours tallying up the damage and Travers says they are just about done, "so that's why we're going to announce the hail sale, it might be this Saturday, it might be Monday or Tuesday, but people are still coming in and we are able to sell them right now."