[Matt Lindus]

To van and car owners, especially if you drive a Transit or ford of any age.
Most councils are now using their latest (60 plate) fleet of Gritting Trucks on Uk roads. These gritters are different to the conventional older type units, in that the new ones have two large plastic tanks at either side of the main grit hopper. These plastic tanks contain a very strong and volatile mix of liquid Chloride Brine.

This chloride brine is pumped from the tanks to the turn-table that chucks the salt over the road. As the salt is on the turn table it is sprayed with the brine before being thrown onto the road. The idea is, the brine helps economise the usage of salt and also helps it stick to the road and avoids wash away.
This new way of gritting is enormously damaging to vehicles and is already causing corrosion problems on new vehicles. If this salt brine mix is left on your paint work for only short periods of time, it will eat through unbroken paint and start corroding the metal beneath.

I would recommend you whizzing round your van every evening with a sponge and soapy water to get this stuff off, paying special attention to sills and wheel arches. Using a clean cloth, apply oil to the sills and inner wheel arch sills.

This is more info for you...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/3140098/Winter-gritting-could-wreck-cars.html
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2038510_corrosion_concern_over_gritting_technique
http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=71610

Matt

[Helen]

Take it the Telegtraph is running a bit short of news stories to run, the other 2 articles are over 2 years old so I guess the damage is already done.
But it is sound advice to wash down your vehicles after a drive over 'salted' roads.

[clinton]

I try and take my van to the jet wash regular and spec as amt said with all the salt n gunk on the road

Its worth the ten mins just to give it a quick wash.