A digital vehicle inspection is a photographed record of your car's condition, sent to your phone before anyone asks you to spend anything. Every vehicle we service gets one, at all 33 locations. It is the difference between being told your brakes are worn and being shown the measurement.
The noise, the light on the dash, the thing that only happens when it is cold. It goes on the order before anyone picks up a tool.
More than fifty checkpoints, on a lift, with the wheels off where that is the only way to see. The same sheet every time, so nothing gets skipped because the shop was busy.
Not only the problems. The brakes that are fine get photographed too, because “your brakes are fine” means more when you can see them.
A text message with a link. No app to install and no account to make. Photos, measurements and a plain-language note on each item.
Nothing is authorized because it was on a list. You approve what you want done, defer what can wait, and decline what you do not want.
The report
Inspected, within specification, nothing to do. Most of a healthy report is this color, and it is photographed too.
Not urgent and not unsafe, but it is wearing. You get the measurement now so the timing is your decision, not a surprise later.
At or past the manufacturer's limit, or a safety item. The photograph and the number are both there, so you can see why we say so.
A link by text message. Every line has a status, a plain-language note and the photographs behind it. You approve, defer or decline each item yourself — and whatever you decline simply stays on the record for next time, without an argument.
Illustration of the report format. The vehicle and the findings shown are made up for this page — they are not a real customer's inspection.
A sample inspection
Below is the report as it actually arrives, laid out the way our Arizona shops send it. Anything needing attention comes first with its measurement, the recommended repair beside it and the photographs underneath. Everything that passed is listed too, so you can see what was checked and not just what we want to sell you. Open Why is this important? on any flagged line — that explainer is part of the real report.
Below the minimum a pad can no longer shed heat properly and stopping distances lengthen. Once the friction material is gone the backing plate cuts into the rotor, which turns a pad job into a pad and rotor job.
One belt drives the alternator, the water pump and the power steering. When it lets go you lose charging and cooling at the same moment, usually without warning.
New tires start around 10/32. Wet grip falls away below 4/32, which is why this is flagged now rather than at the 2/32 legal limit. Uneven shoulder wear points at alignment, and alignment is what protects the next set.
A restricted filter makes the engine work against its own intake. In Arizona these load up faster than the mileage interval suggests, so we go by what it looks like rather than the schedule.
Brake fluid pulls in moisture from the air. Past about 3% the boiling point has dropped far enough that hard or repeated braking can put vapour in the line, which feels like the pedal going soft.
A seep is damp, a leak drips. This one is worth watching rather than fixing — it gets photographed each visit so you can see whether it is changing.
The layout, the section and checkpoint names and the wording are our real inspection sheet. The findings are written for this page — they are not a real customer's inspection, and no customer's vehicle, plate or photographs appear here. In a real report the photo slots hold photographs of your own vehicle; the small drawings above stand in for them.
What gets photographed
These are the findings that are hard to describe and easy to show. Each one is photographed on your vehicle, with the measurement written next to it.
Friction material measured in millimeters against the manufacturer's minimum, not judged by eye. You see the number and the pad it came from.
Depth gauged across the tire, not glanced at from the side. Wear on one shoulder only is an alignment problem, and the photograph shows which shoulder.
Cracking that only shows when the belt is flexed. A photograph of it beats a sentence about it, because you can see how far it has gone.
The old part beside a clean one, in the same photograph. It is the difference between being told a filter is dirty and seeing that it is.
The four images above are drawn diagrams, included to show what each finding looks like. Your own inspection contains photographs of your vehicle, not drawings.
The tools
The inspection is only as good as the discipline behind it, so the sheet is fixed and the software will not let a technician skip a section or close an item without the photograph.
All 12 Arizona centers
A dedicated inspection platform built for this one job. Technicians work from a fixed sheet of more than fifty topics on a tablet at the vehicle, and the photograph is captured at the point of the finding rather than written up afterwards. The sheet will not let a technician close a topic that requires an image without taking one.
The other 21, in Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey
The inspection built into the shop management system every one of our 33 locations runs. The findings, the photographs and the estimate live in the same record, so what you approve is what gets worked on.
A digital inspection is a good tool for showing you the truth and an equally good tool for selling you things. The difference is entirely in how a shop chooses to use it, so here is our side of it in plain terms.
Nothing is authorized because it appeared on a list. A yellow item is a yellow item — we will tell you roughly how long you have and we will not restate it as urgent. If you decline something, it stays on the record for next time and nobody calls you about it. And if the honest answer is that the work belongs at a dealer, you will get that answer instead of the job.
Every location does this, on every vehicle, every visit.