As Sean Laukhuff was leaving Park City with his fiancée late Sunday afternoon, he got a disturbing call on his cell phone.

A neighbor phoned to say Laukhuff's 2007 Dodge Ram pickup, parked in the driveway of his Maytown house, was getting pummeled by hail.

Laukhuff hustled home to find 35 dents on its hood, 50 more on its roof — and thousands more vehicles across Lancaster County in the same condition.

Laukhuff, though, is in no hurry to get his own vehicle repaired.

As the owner of Dent Techs, a paintless dent-repair firm, he'd rather get other vehicles back in shape promptly, in the wake of Sunday's high-powered storm and tornado.

So he and a friend, Jason Morrison, owner of Mr. Dent Inc., another paintless dent-repair firm, have summoned 35 traveling dent-repair technicians from across the country.

These self-described "hail chasers," whose ranks here will swell to 50 next week, are working at 12 car dealerships and body shops in Lancaster and York counties that are swamped with storm-damage work.

"Mine needs to be fixed, but it will be the last to be fixed," said Laukhuff, 32, a 1995 Hempfield High School graduate.

The "imported" technicians might stay here as long as three months, given the widespread damage, supplementing Dent Tech, Mr. Dent and the staffs of the dealerships and body shops.

The dealerships and body shops are happy to have the extra help.

"We're very grateful. It's definitely made our life a lot easier," said Rob Giroux, general manager of Twin Pine Auto Group in Ephrata, where more than 300 vehicles were damaged.

(The only one unscathed is a 2006 Corvette, which has a resilient Fiberglas body.)

Giroux noted that by using paintless dent-repair techniques, the "hail chasers" are able to preserve the vehicles' value. Repainted vehicles fetch lower prices because buyers might worry that the new paint is from collision repairs, he explained.

Twin Pine has 10 to 12 "hail chasers" working in a heated tent, rented by Laukhuff and set up in the parking lot.

Inside the tent, big enough to hold nine vehicles at a time, the "hail chasers" are working double shifts, six days a week.

It's a meticulous job, but well paying.

"Hail chasers" can gross up to $1,000 a day, depending on the amount of work required per vehicle, although they have the expenses of a hotel room, meals and travel.

However, the storm damage on the local vehicles is so extensive that the repairs are taking longer, which is reducing the daily gross of the "hail chasers" here to $300 to $500.

"It's a tough business to be in, because we're away from our families," said "hail chaser" Bob Sloneker, 44, who came to Twin Pine on Monday from Riverside, Calif.

On the other hand, there's "the camaraderie with the guys," "decent money," steady work and the chance to see the world.

"This is a rarity, coming up to these parts," said Sloneker, whose luggage and tools got lost en route. "It's really cool to see the Amish. We're not used to seeing people riding around in buggies."

Sloneker described the technicians as a tight-knit group, traveling in teams of four or more to storm scenes around the world.

"We network pretty well. If there's a huge storm and you have 3,000 or 7,000 cars damaged, you know who the good technicians are and keep those numbers handy," he said.

Besides Sloneker and his friends from California, technicians brought here by Laukhuff and Morrison also come from — or "hail from," you might say — Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas, among other states.

Sloneker met Laukhuff last year, when both responded to a storm scene in New Hampshire.

These days, long-distance "hail chasing" is relatively rare for Laukhuff, unlike the start of the decade, when he spent four years working at storm scenes worldwide, traveling as far as Australia and Europe.

"I used to do a lot of it. I'm settling down. I'm getting married June 20. I have to be home by midnight now."


Staff writer Tim Mekeel can be reached at tmekeel@LNPnews.com or 481-6030.