Collision Repair Industry

When I took some bodywork classes at my local CC before Covid, every one of the kids had a job before the end of the year. Several were working part time by Spring semester.

It's always been interesting to me that paint and body guys do not get more respect in the big wide world. They are at least as talented as a good mechanic.

I once had a first year Nissan Titan quad-cab, short-bed truck (the horror) we were using as a family car. The cab was huge, and the truck went anywhere in any weather, and would haul all our stuff under the roll-up bed cover. Anyhow, when the truck had less than 2000 mi., Jeanie was rear-ended hard while waiting to make a turn. A frame member of the car behind her hit the dropped ball in the receiver hitch, which acted like a lever to bend the frame of the truck.

This was a brand new vehicle, so the at-fault insurance company didn't want to total it. I'd paid $28K out the door, but the truck listed for over $32K, plus tax. It was on the line and the adjuster was playing hardball.

The at-fault insurance company paid my local bodyshop $27K to completely disassemble the entire truck and rebuild it on a new frame (in addition to a couple of months of a rental car). Village Autobody in Nowhere, USA completely built a truck in their shop. It took longer than anything I'd seen to that point - but when I got it back, it was functionally perfect. It was tighter than new, and everything worked flawlessly. The paint was better, etc.

I knew that both me and the at-fault insurance company had been screwed by the adjuster (he really should have totaled it), but what the paint and body guys did was nothing short of amazing to me. They'd done a frame-off restoration of a brand new vehicle, with all the gewgaws and all the whatnots attendant in a modern vehicle.

A good paint and body shop, run by techs who know what they're doing accomplish amazing things.

I guess I'll find out soon if I chose "A good paint and body shop, run by techs who know what they're doing..." to fix Pam's car.  We just (1 hour ago) dropped her Outback off to get a new door put on it.  The car is 3 1/2 years old with just under 7800 miles on it (!) but we got hit by a motorcyclist after taking one of our pups to be put to sleep. It was not a good day.

When I recently inquired about some rust repair a place told me "We're a collision center, not a body shop".

Have any of you heard this?  What's the difference?

I would guess that a collision center wants to deal with insurance repairs only.  A body shop will do anything body related.  Just a guess.

@Michael McKelvey posted:

When I recently inquired about some rust repair a place told me "We're a collision center, not a body shop".

Have any of you heard this?  What's the difference?

The answer is in your post. Nobody wants to deal with rust. Nobody.

I found a car restoration place that is willing to do it.  The rust is at the rear jacking location on my wife's 2006 Scion xB.  She loves the car and wants to keep it forever.

Today , many ( Collision ) shops just want to do the Insurance jobs, a body shop tends to be more skilled in rust remediation, custom work and higher end painting . Because shops can't find experienced help even I have a standing employment offer at my friend's high end body shop ..... " Just show up at 7AM with coffee and you work for when you want " but I don't want to go back to work either :~)

I always thought they were 2 terms for the same thing.

I'll bet that a lot of people get scared off by the potential Cancer warnings from the dust of body fillers and paint spray (not to mention fiberglass dust).  Even though the newer "Water Borne" paints are supposed to be safer, they once told us that Imron and Epoxy boat paints were safe, too, and look how that turned out.

There are three or four collision/body shops left in my town, and all of the Mom & Pop shops are gone.  Those remaining are all big and all seem to have a constant turnover of cars needing work there.  None of those are what I would consider "high end" but they get the job done and Alan's right - Young people really aren't going into that line of work so all of the people working there are pretty old (50+).  When they retire they don't get replaced, the shop just down-sizes until it's gone.

Here a company named Gerber is buying up all the independent shops.  They now have several locations here in  Ann Arbor, Michigan.

They are probably doing it elsewhere too.

Yup.  We have them here and that's where Pam's car is now.  Fingers crossed.

@Lane Anderson posted:

I guess I'll find out soon if I chose "A good paint and body shop, run by techs who know what they're doing..." to fix Pam's car.  We just (1 hour ago) dropped her Outback off to get a new door put on it.  The car is 3 1/2 years old with just under 7800 miles on it (!) but we got hit by a motorcyclist after taking one of our pups to be put to sleep. It was not a good day.

Sorry about your pup.

I narrowly missed T-Boning someone who turned left into a parking lot in front of me today, right after I’d dropped Milo off for a dental cleaning. Good to know the ABS is working. Kept me from flat-spotting my Vredesteins.

The exception:   Three years ago I met a younger guy ( Brandon ) from Moorefield,  West Virginia when I was building the VW Beetle Smyth Ute / truck, he was also building one, so I drove out to see his progress and pick his brain at his Body shop two hours away.      Brandon was just 29 y/o and a father of three,  he worked for the shop right out of HS, the owner mentored him and decided to sell and retire offering the entire business to Brandon with the owner holding 2/3rds of the paper.  Brandon's wife and  local bank President had faith in him and his plan loaning him the balance of what he needed. Brandon and his shop buddy let 4 out of 6 employees go then set out to hire ppl with little experience figuring they would not bring bad habits and poor craftsmanship and he would mentor them as did the previous owner.  It worked, he hired three kids out of HS, two ppl that were two years sober and still successful in programs. Additionally, he hired a 23 y/o single mom for the office w/ flex hours and a PT retired guy as a ...utility guy.

Brandon's team did one speedster for me I sold to Paul in Maryland.  The fit and finish it was stunning.

I contacted Brandon in January to prep and paint the Outlaw and he was 7 plus months out at that point so I went back to Tommy in PA for paint.    I just spoke with Brandon yesterday ,  He has decided not to do any Progressive Insurance work because of them cutting corners w/ a disregard for their customer and safety.  He just installed a second $ 100,000 top of the line spray booth, his business loan with the previous owner is now Paid in Full in just three years! The bank's loan is half paid for and they are at a point where they are only 2 weeks out on accepting new work...and he only parted company with one of his employees who relocated, ....Overall not too shabby I'd say !

What a great story!

@Michael McKelvey posted:

I always thought they were 2 terms for the same thing.

It kind of reminds me of my career as a live sound engineer vs a studio engineer. We both use almost the exact same tools to accomplish two completely different things.

Things you’ll find at a “Collision Center” that most body shops don’t have: a computerized frame table.* And a pretty good (or really good) PDR guy. Things you rarely see at a collision center: dip tanks, blasting rooms, rotisseries, sheet metal brakes and English wheels.  

One other thing: Cashiers. If a body shop has a cashier, it’s generally the painter’s wife. (Or mom in the case of the guy that painted my SC) At a collision center, the cashier is the MVP as they’re the ones that deal with all the insurance companies.

* During my last semester at the CC pre-Covid, they got a new computerized frame table. We watched a film on it. Pretty amazing, but not half as amazing as watching our instructor use it over the course of the semester to take a totaled Co-Part Gladiator and straighten it out and transform it into a rock crawler.

My dad was a body man for 40-odd years; worked for my cousin for about 10-15 of those. Uncle was also for like 20 before he ditched it to sell Amway and become a Carlton Sheets slumlord.

I grew up breathing paint fumes.

And you guys all know way more about the business than I ever did or will.

Respect.

@Michael McKelvey posted:

When I recently inquired about some rust repair a place told me "We're a collision center, not a body shop".

Have any of you heard this?  What's the difference?

Michael, I had the same experience when I was looking for a shop to repair some rust on my Vanagon  (typical rust locations on a VW bus; windshield, side window, window on rear hatch).

I visited at least 15 shops all around Orange County (SoCal). Same response..."We only do insurance repair".  I'm guessing that's because the majority of the work is replacing damaged panels with new replacement panels.

Long story short, I finally found a shop that did rust repair (metal work). They would email me progress pics of the metal work and paint. 2 weeks, later got my Vanagon back looking as good as new! A little pricey, but the result was excellent!

Hope you & JP will be just as happy with your XB's repair!

While on the road to Hana, some cars came over into our lane. I squeezed by, but put some scratches on the passenger door in the process.

I went to 3 highly rated body shops and none of them would touch the speedster. "Hmmm, that's fiberglass?"  "We don't really do cars like this, etc."

A brain storm led me to the local VW repair/speed shop where I asked who did the paint on their dune buggies. They pointed me to the body shop next door. They'd been in the business for 40 years and did a perfect job on fixing things up. Hagerty held up their end without even an inspection.

Having done a lot of fiberglass and paint work, it surprised me that the other body shops were scared of it.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

I'll bet that a lot of people get scared off by the potential Cancer warnings from the dust of body fillers and paint spray (not to mention fiberglass dust).  Even though the newer "Water Borne" paints are supposed to be safer, they once told us that Imron and Epoxy boat paints were safe, too, and look how that turned out.

There are three or four collision/body shops left in my town, and all of the Mom & Pop shops are gone.  Those remaining are all big and all seem to have a constant turnover of cars needing work there.  None of those are what I would consider "high end" but they get the job done and Alan's right - Young people really aren't going into that line of work so all of the people working there are pretty old (50+).  When they retire they don't get replaced, the shop just down-sizes until it's gone.

I've worked with multi- component polyurethanes (Imron, Endura and others) and epoxies off and on for 45? years and always known those materials were deadly to your health.  I've always worn a proper respirator when spraying that class of material- won't do it without it.