Broken windshields

Sstratton6175 said:

I was driving home in my company van this past week and had a small rock kick up on the highway and put a small spider crack in my windshield. Then two days later I had another small rock fall off a dump truck that was passing me and put another small crack into it. After the hot sun hit the windshield the 2nd crack grew to about 18” long. Over the past few years I’ve had at least three or four windshields that had to be replaced in my work vehicles. Do any of you guys have the same problem? I don’t know if it’s just because I spend a lot more time driving the company van, but I can’t remember the last time I had to replace a windshield in my personal vehicles. It’s not like I drive any differently in my own truck. It just seems to happen a lot more in the company van.

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That sucks.
I think of cracked windshields like I think of getting a flat tire- I dread them. My current '17 Express has a five-star windshield. Five little stars, all of them below the mid-line and toward the sides. Got the first one in early '18. Got the most recent one yesterday. None of them have spread, even in summer. Now watch, they're gonna.

I'm convinced that the design of the vehicle has a lot to do with it. I've had many personal vehicles over the years, usually pick ups and have only replaced windshields twice that I can recall. Then I bought a Honda Element, and I must have replaced the windshield in that vehicle 4 or 5 times. My current work cube van I'm on the road all day, and although I have a few stone strikes in the last year and a half, no cracks.

I bought my cube 6 years a go(?), it came with a chip just above the left wiper. The second winter I had it I had a weekend emergency after a snow storm. Got home and had another call come in. The snow on the roof had slid down on the windshield and turned the chip into a good sized crack. Got the first chip in the new windshield a couple weeks ago. This is the only windshield I’ve ever replaced.

Had to make a quick purchase for the wife’s vehicle one cold snowy, icy day in the middle of February about 10 years ago. The windshield was still icy when we test drove it and didn’t see all the chips in it until we signed the paperwork. There has to be close to a dozen chips, the largest and most annoying one is right smack dab in the middle of the driver’s vision. None have spidered. Weird….

It's the time of day you drive your personal vehicle. The time of day you normally drive your personal vehicle there aren't as many trucks driving near you to kick up or lose rocks.

When the windshield on my camo van got hit with a rock from an oncoming trailer full it was the middle of a work day I had taken off to go to the doctor's.

My wife was driving my pickup truck mid day and the end of a horn on the top of a semi cab came off and made a huge dent in my hood.

I've had my current work van for over 5 years now, it got 3 new windshields in a 6 month period, one from a turkey, two from rocks kicked up by trucks. Sometimes when it rains, it pours.

We average 5-6 windshields per year, have about 15 vehicles on the road daily...typically the van style/box trucks are worse, we had 1 that every single year it needed a windshield. I swear that aerodynamic bubble above the roof of the cab, sucks the air/rocks down onto the windshields. We also average 30k-35k a year on our trucks, so a lot of miles.