Rat eats car!
Posted on 28th January 2025 at 16:23
Help, my cars being eaten by rats!
Looking back to when I was a firefighter, to the outsider, we had some seemingly strange ways of doings things; the crew you worked with were called a Watch, the fire engine was called the appliance, and we called ropes lines instead of rope and every day at 11 o’clock we all sat down to a cup of tea and a toasted cheese sandwich.
No matter where you were and pretty much it didn’t matter which Brigade you were in, at eleven you knew exactly what you’d be doing, you never questioned any of this it’s just how it was done and there’s one thing that we all know; a cheese sandwich goes down well with a blob of tomato ketchup on the side.
Please don’t tell me that you’re a brown sauce type of person, brown sauce is for sausage sandwiches, a cheese toasty goes with ketchup just like our English summer goes with rain. As a nation we munch our way through 150 thousand tonnes of the red tomatoey stuff each year but when you’re churning out that much produce, what do you do with all the waste? The tomato skins, the pips and the vine stalks?
Can a rat really eat my car?
The words “We’re gonna need a bigger bin” comes to mind; however, this waste material doesn’t go to landfill, instead some clever people in white coats have realised that this material can be recycled into something that’s called ‘bioplastic’. This is a rigid plastic like compound that is manufactured from different types of vegetable matter and can be used to enhance the eco credentials of companies such as those in the vehicle trade, where they can turn this material into body parts and are therefore recyclable and ‘green’.
I’m sure those clever people would call it resolving a problem for the good of humanity, but I prefer to call it by its true name - “making my problem, your problem” and that’s exactly what it is. So why is a pest controller writing a blog on cheese toasties and tommy k? It’s because I’m seeing a lot of damage to vehicles and getting a lot of calls from people who have problems with rats eating their cars, or rather, eating Heinz’s factory waste.
Back in 2014 the Ford motor company were so proud of their collaboration with Heinz, they released a news report which you can read here.
Rats are extremely clever scavengers, it’s their undeniably Number 1 superpower and as they ‘learn’ that our cars, instead of being manufactured from petroleum-based products are in fact made out of recycled sugar cane, corn and tomatoes. To a rat your car is a tasty snack or they wouldn’t keep on attacking them, and unfortunately, we will see more and more attacks to cars as time progresses and more bioplastics are introduced.
Read more on bioplastics from Stellarix:
The remains of a Transit van that became a rats evening meal: this material was deposited on the floor under the van overnight.

How to protect your car from rats
But what can you do? If you’re looking to buy a new car or van and if you ask the salesman about the use of bioplastics in the vehicles, I doubt you’ll get anything other than a blank look.
There are things that you can do to protect your vehicle from hungry rodents and the most obvious thing to do, is to park it inside a secure garage, I know that many garages are now smaller than the vehicle it was designed to hold but I did attend a job in Maidenhead where a Porsche had had its wiring loom eaten and the owner had a double garage which was empty at the time.
Most garages have an up and over door, when the doors closed there’s often a gap between the bottom off the door and the concrete floor; if you can get your little finger in through this gap, that’s all a mouse needs. If you can get your thumb through this gap; that’s a rat!
The simple and really cost-effective solution here, is to take a decking board, close the door and from the inside offer the board up to the opening. You’ll probably need to trim the corners to fit the frame but with a few cuts you should get a nice tight fit that butts up against the bottom of the door. Fix this board to the floor and being tanalised timber you’ve got between 10 and 15 years protection for around £20.
There is a solution for open fronted covered areas and unsecure garages in the form of Rat Mat, this is like an electric fence but in the form of floor tiles that you fix down and surround the parking bay. Once the car is parked inside any rodents coming onto the mat get an electric shock which deters them from crossing. At around £1500 for a large sized grid it’s not the cheapest solution but a grand and half is going to be cheaper than any garage repair bill and you’re saved the hassle of a break down, vehicle hire and recovery costs.
For cars which have to be left outside, a much cheaper alternative is an aerosol spray from a company called Lodi, they actually supply me with some of my chemicals so I’ve no doubt that this works well. You simply spray all of the cables and mounts with this and at under £40 for a tin it’s much more affordable, although you’ll need to respray these areas from time to time.
Why you should choose a professional pest control company
Controlling rats outside and preventing them from coming onto or into your property is always going to be the best way to protect your vehicles and for that, the best way is always going to be by hiring the services of a professional pest control company. Now, someone is going to mention ultrasonic rodent repellents and how effective they are, and sorry, just like that person who has brown sauce on their cheese toasty, they’re so very wrong.
One of the great urban myths going about runs like this: Mrs Miggins / my friend / my mum, has had rats for years and years in her house, and despite her efforts and the efforts of various pest companies it was only when she put ultrasonic repellents in her home that the rats disappeared. Absolutely utter rubbish! If these stories were true I’d drive around in a flash car and wear a suit to work instead of driving a van and usually wearing dirty workwear.
Ultrasound is simply a high frequency sound wave that we are unable to hear, and the theory is that this sound can be picked up by rats and mice and it causes them so much distress so they run away from the source of this sound.
But that’s now how ultrasound works, it is a beam of sound that is easily reflected back to the source which is why we have ultrasound scanners, this is how bats find their food at night and how dolphins can detect fish hiding deep in sand.
If you have a ultrasonic repellent plugged in your house, it sends out sound waves like a torch gives off a beam of light, so to be effective your rat or mouse has to stand pretty much in front of the device to be affected. If you don’t believe me, type the following into Google - do ultrasonic pest repellers work uk?
The reply back is - No, ultrasonic pest repellers are not effective in the UK. They are considered a scam and are not recommended by researchers.
Enough said I think.

Share this post: