Shifting careers
Fort Worth man sees the light, becomes ‘headlight doctor’

Woody Dlugosch is a doctor, his specialty is vision, and his patients are headlights.

After returning home a year ago in the wake of the recession, the Fort Worth native launched a new career as The Headlight Doctor, a mobile service in which he cleans, resurfaces and corrects aging headlights on automobiles across the Fort Worth-Dallas area to improve lighting and aid drivers’ sight.

So maybe he’s not really a doctor, but Dlugosch’s work could help save a life.

“In the late ‘80s, [car manufacturers] started making all these lenses out of polycarbonate. That means they got rid of the true glass lens,” he said, for reasons including “cost [and] safety – because [the polycarbonate lens] is basically not breakable up to a certain speed impact, and glass does not bend.”

With glass out and plastics in, some problems were solved but new problems arose. The polycarbonate lenses are porous so heat created by the bulbs can escape, allowing the headlights to breathe, in a sense, and other stuff to get in.

“After three years, on average, the ultraviolet rays start penetrating that – all the dust and debris. That’s what actually causes the damage to the headlight,” he added. “I call it a cataract of some sort: cloudy lens, yellow discoloration. It’s actually like a cancer on the lens itself.”

This prevents the bulbs from shining through to their fullest ability, or, as Dlugosch explains, “like putting a pair of sunglasses over your car lenses.”

When damaged or discolored over time, it can cost between $150 and $250 to replace each headlight due to its complexity and the labor involved, sometimes more. Cleaning headlights with soap and water (never ammonia or glass cleaner) helps but doesn’t reverse the damage done. Some automobile services companies, Wal-Mart’s garage, for example, offer a topical ointment for about $40. Dlugosch calls this the “buff and run,” a short-term remedy.

He’s confident The Headlight Doctor is the better option. The service begins at a base cost of $59.95 per headlight, and can go up depending on the car’s make and model (BMWs, for example, have more complicated lighting) and distance-to-customer traveled. The process can take about 30 minutes for each lens, with between eight stages to 12 stages of wet-sanding to resurface the lens, leaving them “almost like new,” without removing the headlights in the process.

Dlugosch, 51, started the business about a year ago. He was living in the northwest United States for more than two decades, but the economy left his insurance business hurting. He opted to shut it down and head home, and took up his new career at the behest of a friend in California, a former mortgage broker who turned to headlight repair to get by.

Since beginning, Dlugosch estimates he has resurfaced at least 250 lenses.

According to the National Safety Council, traffic death rates are three times greater at night than during the day due to darkness and its impacts on depth perception, color recognition and peripheral vision. Also, older drivers have even greater difficulties seeing at night. Per the council, a 50-year-old driver may need twice as much light to see as well as a 30-year old.

Those facts combined with the fact that a foggy, UV- and dirt-damaged headlight can emit light less than half as far as a new or clean headlight are reasons enough Dlugosch thinks he’s made the right choice for a new career.

“It allows you to see as well as your car to be seen at night,” he said of the resurfacing process. “That’s the main thing: can other people see you?”

Rick Vasquez is manager for Alta Mere window and tint in west Fort Worth. He has used the Headlight Doctor as an independent contractor for at least six months, and describes Dlugosch as honest and hardworking.

“He does a great job,” said Vasquez, adding Alta Mere didn’t offer the service before Dlugosch. “If those headlights get all foggy or they don’t come in very clear, he just cleans them up really nice. It’s a visibility issue and definitely a safety issue.”

Like Alta Mere and several others around town, Dlugosch hopes to gain more auto-services accounts in the future, and maybe land some emergency vehicles (firetrucks, police cars) and long-distance travelers (buses) accounts, too. The public still is his largest source of revenue so far.

“What do people do when they have a problem with their bodies and stuff?” he asked. “They go to the doctor … so I just called myself the Headlight Doctor.”