BY MATT HELMS and MIKE WENDLAND

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

The annual products of spring no one wants to see are popping up all over metro Detroit, bringing misery and expensive car repairs.

It's pothole season.

Just ask Denise Reid of Detroit. She was driving her 1999 Ford Taurus onto the Southfield Freeway from a side street between 7 Mile and 8 Mile roads in Detroit a few weeks back.

"All of the sudden, I went into a deep hole," Reid, 37, said Tuesday. "The air bags went off. It was like a collision."

Reid has been without the car since, unable to afford extensive repairs. She takes the bus or gets a lift from friends and family to get to work as a part-time student assistant at Oakland Community College's Southfield campus.

Such is life in a state with a wicked freeze-thaw cycle that tears up pavement and keeps road crews busy patching tire-busters this time of year. Because of the relatively mild winter, 2007's pothole count may be on the lower side, county road commissions said.

That is because the warm early winter left less time for a deep ground frost to develop. Shallower ground frosts mean soil beneath roads dries and stabilizes more quickly, said Craig Byson, spokesman for the Road Commission for Oakland County.

And there have been fewer of the severe swings between super cold and unusually warm temperatures, the National Weather Service said.

The Michigan Department of Transportation said it spends about $8 million each year to patch potholes on the roughly 10,000 miles of expressways and major roads it controls statewide.

"There's about 120,000 miles of roads in the state of Michigan, and the majority of those are under the jurisdiction of the counties, cities and villages," MDOT spokesman Bill Shreck said.

One year can be atrocious for potholes while another is comparatively mild -- and there is no reliable way to know exactly how many of the damaging ruts are out there.

"Every year is different because of the elements and the number of freeze-thaw cycles we have," said Ali El-Hajj, west-side maintenance engineer for Wayne County Roads.

It takes only one big pothole to cause a mess.

One day last week Matt Rose, assistant manager of the Discount Tire Co. on Rochester Road in Troy, looked out the front window to find his parking lot rapidly filling with cars. The vehicles -- 12 in all -- went in with a spare right front wheel.

A giant pothole at the intersection of Wattles and Rochester roads had taken out the tires during the morning rush south toward I-75. That pothole has since been patched.

"That was quite the morning," Rose said. "But this time of year, it's rare we don't see at least one wrecked tire every day because of a pothole. Sometimes, it's an outright blowout. Other times it goes flat a mile down the road. Then sometimes, the wheel itself is damaged, too. By far and away, most tire damage we see is caused by potholes."

Nancy Cain, spokeswoman for AAA Michigan, said the state's largest auto insurer has fielded 1,900 pothole claims so far this year.

That is on par with numbers for 2006, when the agency had about 10,000 claims. Cain said the largest share is from southeast Michigan, mostly because there are more roads, cars and people in this region than in any other in the state.

Cain said the average pothole claim is $638, compared with $624 last year. Increasing costs for parts and labor are behind the increase. Tires can cost $50 to $150 each, as can tie-rods and other parts, Cain said.

Body shops and tire repair facilities across metro Detroit say pothole season is in full swing.

"This is an all-day, everyday thing, especially in spring," said John Joannidis of Dimo Auto Service in Royal Oak. "But come on, this is Michigan. Everybody knows we have the worst roads in the country, right?"

Joannidis runs a one-man garage on Main Street on the city's north side and for 33 years, he has seen the damage.

"These potholes take out suspension systems, ball joints, struts, tie-rods," he said. "They even crack springs. This is serious stuff, man."

Joannidis said he doesn't think this year is any worse than others, though. That is because "it's bad all the time," he said. "They no sooner patch one pothole than another pops up."

Don't look for that to change any year soon.

The Michigan Municipal League said local governments are in bad shape road-wise because higher gas prices and a bad economy have reduced the amount of money raised for local roadwork from Michigan's 19-cents-a-gallon gas tax, which is not based on gas prices.

The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments estimates the region will need $70 billion to pay for all of its transportation needs through 2030, but will have only $40 billion available.

That $30-billion shortfall leaves a whole lot of room for a blooming mess each spring.