Centreville, Virginia-based vehicle history company Carfax knows more about your car than you might think, including which owners are missing regularly-scheduled preventive maintenance.
Carfax can also remind you it’s time with an app that’s free.
According to its most recent data, 29% of vehicle owners nationwide are behind on oil changes, and 44% haven’t had their tires rotated as required. About 1 in 5 owners are behind on both.
Regionally, Virginia drivers do a better job at keeping up with oil and tire maintenance.
“What we found is that Virginia drivers are much more on top of the ball than Maryland drivers,” said Patrick Olsen from Carfax. “There has been speculation from some people I have talked to that Virginia’s safety inspection may be a reason why more car owners keep their cars up to date.”
Vehicle owners in Alaska and West Virginia have the worst track record for regular maintenance. Owners in Wisconsin and Minnesota have the best track record, according to Carfax.
There may be many reasons for owners putting off or skipping scheduled vehicle maintenance, but a tire rotation and an oil change are crucially important to keeping a vehicle running well and safely.
One misconception may be about the expense of out-of-warranty oil changes.
“They think it’s something they need to get done every 3,000 miles, but now I have this synthetic oil in my car and it’s super expensive,” Olsen said. “Well, it is more expensive for sure, but it also means your car can go many more miles. A lot of automakers now call for anywhere from 7,500 miles to 10,000 miles between oil changes.”
If both are done routinely, the expense is about $300 a year, according to Carfax.
The Carfax Car Care app, which sends out reminders about scheduled service, is free. The app has 35 million users. The alerts the app sends may be redundant to dashboard reminders in the vehicle, but can serve as an extra nudge to get it done. And it is a good feature for families.
“I monitor my wife’s car and my three kids’ cars,” Olsen said. “They live all over the country so I can’t see their cars. But I can follow this and make sure they are staying up to date.”
