Jason found us through the website in the middle of June. He had a brand new 2026 GMC Denali 3500 and wanted it protected before Florida had a chance to get to it. We set it up for a ceramic coating on the paint and the plastic trim. He dropped the truck off on a Monday morning at the end of June.
Why Coat a Truck This New
The best time to coat a vehicle is when the paint is still in great shape, and you do not get a better starting point than a truck that just came off the lot. There was no swirl damage to chase, so this job did not need a polish or any paint correction. That means the coating goes on over factory paint and locks in the finish the truck came with, instead of trying to win it back a year from now.
A heavy duty truck in Panama City also works for a living. It sits in parking lots in full sun, picks up bugs on every drive down the highway and gets rained on almost every afternoon in the summer. Even this new, the front end already showed it. The bumper and grille had a layer of bug splatter and road film stuck to them by the time it got to the garage.
The Work
A coating is only as good as the surface under it, so the first part of the job is all prep. The Denali got a full foam bath and a careful hand wash from the roof down, with extra time on the front bumper, the grille and the lower panels where the bugs and road grime were stuck on. Once the truck was clean and dry, every panel got wiped down so nothing was left between the paint and the coating.
Then the coating went on panel by panel across the paint, and the plastic trim got coated too. On a truck this size that is a lot of surface, and the trim is easy to skip. Coated plastic holds its dark color better and does not fade and chalk the way bare trim does after a few summers here. If you want to see how our coating packages compare, our ceramic coating page lays it all out.
The Result
The hood photo above is the one I like most from this job. You can see every edge of the hex lights in the paint, sharp all the way across the panel. The front bumper went from speckled with bugs to clean and glossy, and now that it is coated, the next round of bugs will come off with a normal wash instead of a fight.
It is early October as I write this, the start of fall in Panama City, and the fall love bug flight is right on schedule. Love bugs are acidic, and on bare paint they can etch the clear coat if they sit in the sun. A coated front end gives you a lot more time and makes cleanup easy. If you just picked up a new truck, or yours is still in good shape, take a look at ceramic coating in Panama City and give me a call. I do every job here personally, in a climate controlled garage, one vehicle at a time.