Auto hail damage repair in Plano, TX.

How to tell if your vehicle has hail damage.

Plenty of hail damage is invisible from ten feet away and obvious from two. If a storm came through Plano and you are not sure, this is how to check in your own driveway.

• Look across the panel, not at it. Crouch so your eye is nearly level with the hood or roof and look along the surface toward a light source. Dents that vanish head-on show up as shadows from that angle.
• Check the horizontal panels first. Roof, hood, and deck lid take the most hail because they face straight up. Doors and quarter panels catch less unless the wind was driving.
• Run a hand over the roof. Shallow dents are easier to feel than to see, and the roof is the panel people forget to check.
• Look at the trim, mirrors, and lamps. Cracked mirror housings, chipped lamp covers, and dinged window trim all point to hail even when the panels look clean.
• Check the windshield edges. Hail chips often start at the edges rather than in the middle of the glass.

If any of that turns something up, bring it by. The walk-in hail evaluation at our Plano shop is free and takes about fifteen minutes.

Hail season in North Texas.

Storms run roughly March through June here, and Plano sits in the middle of it. Some springs pass quietly and some drop a cell across Plano, Frisco, Allen and McKinney in one afternoon, and the auto hail repair calls start before the rain stops.

What that means practically is that the shop gets busy in waves. After a large storm, every body shop in the metroplex takes calls at once, estimate slots go quickly, and parts and rental availability tighten across the whole area. Coming in early after a storm is worth more than most people realize.

What hail repair costs.

Nobody advertises this number because the honest answer starts with "it depends." Here is what it depends on, and the ranges we see on North Texas vehicles.

Hail is priced from a matrix your carrier uses too, built on three inputs: which panels are damaged, how many dents are on each panel, and how big those dents are. Aluminum panels are priced higher than steel, and a roof usually needs the headliner dropped to reach it.

Ranges reviewed September 2026. Not a quote.

These are ranges, not quotes. Two things move a vehicle outside them. Broken paint pushes panels out of dent work and into body and refinishing, which costs several times more per panel. And cracked glass or a damaged sunroof brings replacement into the estimate. The walk-in evaluation at Extreme Hail & Collision is free, so the real number costs you nothing to get.

Cracked windshields and glass.

Hail does not stop at sheet metal. A storm that dents a roof will often chip or crack a windshield, and the damage frequently starts at the edges rather than in the middle where you would look for it.

Auto glass is one of only two things we send out to a specialist who does nothing else, and we book and coordinate it as part of your repair rather than handing you a phone number. The same applies to any camera or sensor mounted at the windshield, which the manufacturer requires to be recalibrated once the glass is replaced.

Glass usually falls under the same comprehensive claim as the dent work, so it goes on one estimate and one claim rather than two.

Written to pre-loss condition.

Pre-loss condition means the vehicle comes back the way it was before the storm, in appearance, in panel fit, and in how it drives. On a hail job, that means every dent, not most of them.

It matters because a hail estimate can be written to a number instead of to a standard. Panels get counted short, a dent band gets priced one tier low, the blend gets left off the panel next to a refinished one. The vehicle leaves looking fine under shop lights and wrong in daylight three weeks later. When a carrier's estimate falls short of pre-loss condition, Extreme Hail & Collision documents the gap and takes it back to them.

A DRP shop is on the insurer's list because it agreed to that insurer's pricing and cycle times. That arrangement is good for the carrier. We never signed one. When your adjuster writes an estimate that misses dents, prices a panel wrong, or leaves out the blend on an adjacent panel, we document it and go back to them on your behalf, not theirs.

You do not have to use the shop your insurer recommends. In Texas, you choose who repairs your vehicle. Bring us the claim number, and we handle the rest of the conversation.

Across North Texas.

Based in Plano, twenty minutes from most of Collin County.

Hail is a geography problem before it is a repair problem. A cell that flattens one side of Plano can leave the other side untouched, and the vehicles that come to us after a storm usually arrive in clusters from whichever corridor took the hit.

Plano is home ground, and we are ten minutes from most of it. Frisco and Allen sit close enough that we often see the same storm twice, once from each. McKinney and the northern edge of Collin County catch cells earliest, since most of what reaches us tracks down from the north and west. Richardson and Carrollton come to us for the short drive rather than the storm. Beyond that, vehicles reach us from Dallas and Garland up through Wylie, Prosper, Celina, and The Colony.

Our shop is at 1101 Ohio Dr #111 in West Plano, 75093, just off the George Bush Turnpike and Preston Road, with parking at the door.

The week after a storm is the week nobody has time to sit in a body shop lobby, which is exactly when free pickup and delivery earns its keep. We collect the vehicle, run the claim, and bring it back finished. Plenty of storm clients never see the building.