2022
compiled by John Yoswick
The 12 months of 2022 have been marked with parts and supply chain issues, record backlogs of work at many shops, inflation challenges, increased need for ADAS calibrations, and perhaps the first noticeable uptick in size of the electric vehicle fleet. Here’s our annual round-up of some of the most interesting, important or entertaining quotes heard within the collision industry during the year.
“A sensor may be able to compensate for mechanical wear and tear, settling of the suspension, or some bumper warping as a result of cold winters or hot summers, things of that nature. But when we’re talking about a quarter-panel that’s being replaced, or an impact bar that’s smashed as a result of a front-end collision, I don’t think the technology is ever going to get to a place where it can completely self-calibrate.”
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Nick Dominato, a senior vice president at asTech, asked if he foresees automakers shifting toward more ADAS self-calibrating systems
“OEM parts have been an issue for over a year now, and it's wearing me down. I find myself spending more time on the phone and searching the internet to get these vehicles back out on the road. We service fleets of vans so the time factor is a big deal. Shipping costs are over the top. Large parts are arriving damaged all the time, and it’s hard to refuse the damaged parts because we waited so long for them to arrive.”
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Gigi Walker of Walker’s Auto Body & Fleet Repair in Concord, Calif., speaking in early 2022 of the supply chain challenges
“There are over 200 small business auto repair shops here in the state of Rhode Island. I will side with them every single day over some of the deepest pockets in all of America, the insurance companies.”
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Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, a Democrat in the Rhode Island Senate, invoting to successfully override Governor Dan McKee’s veto of legislation that prohibits an insurer from refusing to pay a body shop for documented necessary sublet services, “including costs and labor incurred to research, coordinate, administrate or facilitate the necessary sublet service, and an automotive industry standard mark-up”
“About five or six years ago, we started doing something a little different. If a vehicle is drivable, we’ll disassemble it, write [the repair plan], take all our photos, schedule a time when hopefully the adjuster will show up, and then we’ll put it back together and back on the road until everything comes in. That way, we don’t have anything on our lot, and the parts are already paid for by insurance. It’s a little bit time-consuming, but it keeps them out of a rental car and we don’t have any of our money out. It takes a lot of coordination, don’t get me wrong, but we also don’t have 200 cars sitting on the lot at our four locations. The downside is you end up with three times the parts in your building. But you’ve locked in the customer, and you’re not pressed with having to update them constantly like you would if their car was here and waiting on parts. It’s not perfect by any means, but it at least helps.”
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Andrew Suggs, president of European Collision Repair, which has four shops in Georgia and Tennessee
“I had a couple of my DRP coordinators on the insurance side ask me outright if they didn’t get that approved, would I drop the program. I said yes, that was likely. They came back within a few days with approvals.”
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shop owner (who asked not to be identified) talking about insurers’ willingness to make changes to DRP agreements this past year, including two that agreed to drop their requirement that the shop use PartsTrader
“You really have to set the client’s expectations. Draw parallels. When you go to a medical specialist, in many cases the bill-payer doesn’t compensate the physician or the surgeon 100 percent. We as repairers didn’t get to choose which horse we have to ride, so to speak. The customer made that decision. ‘If you decided to buy discounted coverage, at this point, this is where you get to pay back some of that 15 percent you saved over the last seven or eight years.’”
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Oregon shop owner Ron Reichen on billing customers for charges not covered by their insurer
“Our shop had fewer than 10 customers exceed rental in the last 10 years, so the 80 we have had in the last six months is a major increase.”
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Zack DeGroot, manager of Riverbend Body Shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on the jump in the number of customers whose rental car coverage under their insurance policy is exhausted before their vehicle is repaired and returned to them
“I’m now being charged to wash a car, when we were never charged before to wash a car. There were things you would consider a cost of doing business, and now because of inflation, and rising wages and all of those things, it’s difficult. You have to understand that, and you have to think [inflation] is rising for everybody. But I can’t just pass on those costs to my policyholders. We actually have to go through the states. So it’s a little bit different for us. That’s why we’re trying so hard to cut our expenses, and actually do a lot more digitally.”
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Brenda Hewitt, who manages the “Guaranteed Repair Network” direct repair operations for Safeco and Liberty Mutual in the Western half of the United States, speaking about the impact of inflation during a panel discussion at last spring’s Women’s Industry Network (WIN) annual conference
“I didn’t know we could charge for washing cars. Thank you. Now I know.”
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Laura Kottschade, operations manager for ABRA Auto Body & Glass in Mankato, Minnesota, speaking to Hewitt a few minutes later during the panel discussion at the WIN conference
“We do not have a recruiting problem. We have a retention problem. How we treat our employees is key. If you don’t provide them with opportunity, they will look elsewhere. They will tell you it’s because of the dollar. But people do not leave a job they love and where they feel appreciated. They leave because of management, period.”
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Virginia Oden, a trade and industrial education program specialist with Oklahoma Career Tech, speaking during a panel discussion on the technician shortage
“We spend a lot of time trying to educate insurance appraisers. So if it’s somebody who comes to our shop frequently, I don’t have to explain the same operations on every single job. However, [with remote claims handling] it’s basically like playing roulette, you don’t know who you’re going to get. It’s burdensome. It takes a long time. Fortunately, in our state physical inspections are required. Our members have started to lean back on the administrative code: ‘Listen, you need to physically inspect the vehicle.’”
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Kyle Bradshaw, director of operations for K&M Collision in Hickory, N.C., and president of the Carolinas Collision Association, discussing the lack of adjusters doing supplement reviews onsite
“I always like to equate associations to gyms. You can’t just join a gym and expect results unless you actually show up and do the work. Associations are very much the same. You have to be part of the solution. Every association benefits from members’ involvement. Sure, dues are important. They fund things. But having people who show up makes a big difference. It changes the success factor of the association.”
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Aaron Schulenburg, executive director for the Society of Collision Repair Specialists
“Our goal was to capture data, and present it in a transparent manner, and to share it with the industry so you can have the dialogue you need to have. I don’t know where that occurs or how that occurs, but I think there’s a big disconnect between what we’ve identified and what exists today.”
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SCRS’ Schulenburg when asked what’s next after he presented the findings of the association’s hands-on study that it says demonstrates that blending a panel takes an average of 31 percent more time than a full panel refinish – rather than the 50 percent less time allocated in the three estimating systems
“It’s an interesting question, but my short answer is no. I think there is a bit of a learning curve, but I believe, when looking at the number of estimate lines, that these vehicles are more complex to work on. We have to expect we’re always going to see, I think, longer cycle times for electric vehicles, just based on the complexity of the scan reports, the different systems you have to touch that maybe you wouldn’t have to on an internal combustion engine vehicle. Also the safety precautions they require. So as time goes by, we’re probably not going to see dramatic improvement in EV cycle time compared to other vehicle propulsion types.”
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Ryan Mandell, director of claims performance for Mitchell International, when asked if the industry’s learning curve with electric vehicles is what’s leading to cycle times being 1.5 days longer for those vehicles compared to comparable vehicles with internal combustion engines
“So if you’re emailing the shop, ‘cc’ your customer in that for information purposes. And continue the thread. It keeps them informed and, believe it or not, when I was on the shop side, I got paid for most everything I did because I kept [the customer] informed.”
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Connie Hutton, an appraiser for Erie Insurance, suggesting during a Collision Industry Conference “Estimating Committee” panel discussion that insurers and shops keep “customers in the loop” about the claims adjusting processes
“We need to invest in cloning technology. Because that’s literally something that’s created friction between me and appraisers before. It’s, ‘What are you doing talking to the customer about this?’ But it’s their car.”
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Rob Wagner of Rob Wagner Auto Body in Pittsburgh speaking of Hutton, saying said he was “blown away” by her suggestion
“I don’t anticipate repair volume to come back to pre-pandemic levels maybe ever. A lot of that has to do with vehicles getting smarter, and with ADAS being standard on every new vehicle. Especially in terms of front-end collisions, they’re going to become less frequent and more costly.”
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Bart Mazurek, vice president of consulting services for CCC Intelligent Solution’s automotive services group, noting in late 2022 that claims counts were running ahead of 2021, but still weren’t what they were in 2019
“I think that has to do with repair facilities reevaluating DRPs based on the current market and their goals. And they decided to reduce the number of DRP programs to better align with their goals.”
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CCC’s Mazurek, reporting that shops across all business models (single-location, dealership, MSOs), have an average of 4.6 DRPs in 2022, down from an average of 5.2 in 2021 (more than an 11% decline)
“This customer was a repeat customer for us. We had done five repairs for him. We have done none since.”
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Denise Koukal, chief information officer for the LaMettry’s Collision chain in Minnesota, speaking of a customer who discovered that the repair of his vehicle by LaMettry’s led to an entry on his vehicle’s history report, without the shop having any knowledge of how that information reached the history report provider
“With the advent of more semi-autonomous vehicles and automatic driving features, in my opinion this is going to come to pass at some point. This is going to have to be addressed for the safety of the motoring public. In my opinion, we need to be involved as an industry so that we make sure it is done right, not just have legislation coming at us that isn’t correct.”
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Chuck Olsen of AirPro Diagnostics saying he believes more states will begin to mandate periodic vehicle safety inspections
MORE "QUOTES OF THE YEAR"
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