Collision shops share the one thing they wouldn’t want their business to be without
By John Yoswick
Look around the shop for a few minutes and ask yourself: What’s the one thing that’s really boosting production, saving us money, improving repair quality or customer service, cutting our cycle time, helping us manage the business, or otherwise adding to our bottom line? In other words, what the one thing you wouldn’t want your business to be without when you turn the key in the lock each morning?
Is it a particular tool or piece of equipment? A service provider or computer system the shop uses? A human source of help, like a key employee or a consultant?
Here’s what shop owners and managers pointed to when asked for some of the top things they can’t imagine not having in their business?
Shop management system offers a handle on business
Melanie King-Salgado said something she wouldn’t want to be without at Auto Art Collision Specialists, the 7,500-square-foot shop she manages in Escondido, Calif., is the CCC ONE Management System.
“I rely pretty heavily on that for running our day-to-day operations,” King-Salgado said. “I would probably find it a bit of a struggle if I didn’t have that. Being able to have a handle on the shop makes it probably my No. 1 tool. They’ve been integrating the system so much lately, with ALLDATA, asTech and Kent Products and Wurth.”
One thing she’s seen that she would like to see added or integrated into CCC ONE is the real-time aspects of Akzo Nobel’s Carbeat production management system.
“It’s a live system that lets you see into your shop,” she said. “It’s very visual, so you can quickly see you have five cars in prep, five cars in body, four cars waiting for supplements. I liked that about the Summit Management System that I used in another shop. Technicians actually update it as vehicles move along through the process. I’m looking at possibly bringing Carbeat in, but it would be great if CCC ONE incorporated something like that.”
Dent-pulling system paid for itself quickly
Byron Davis, owner of Auto Body Specialties, a 20-employee business in Springfield, Ore., has high praise for the Miracle System dent-pulling system his shop has for both steel and aluminum.
“It’s the best tool we’ve ever purchased, and it gets used every single day, non-stop,” he said. “It paid for itself quickly. New employees can never figure out how other shops where they’ve been went without it.”
Internal communication a must
At 7:35 a.m. each weekday, the entire staff of each location of 1st Certified Collision Centers in Southern California meets to review, car-by-car, what is slated for completion that day. The shop manager lists those vehicles on a dry-erase board located in the production area.
At 2 p.m., the entire staff gathers in front of that board again, to go over the status of those vehicles and commit to what time they will be ready so the front office staff can update customers.
“I personally think those meetings make a big difference,” Ron Villard, a company vice president who oversees two of the seven 1st Certified shops. “I don’t know how I could run a shop without that communication. I never have a customer calling me asking what’s going on. Now occasionally they might not be happy with what we tell them at 2:15, but they’re not upset about not being kept informed.”
Scanning service helps avoid oversights
Given that John Kimpton and Cris Kuhnhausen started their Oregon business together in the 1980s as a mechanical repair shop, it might not be entirely surprising that one thing they wouldn’t want to be without is a vehicle scan tool. In their case, they use the asTech remote scanning tool and service.
“We’re on our second-generation asTech,” Kimpton said. “Our first one had a serial number in the 30s. They only sold a couple dozen other ones before we bought one.”
The two college friends added collision repair to their business by the mid-1990s, after “dabbling in that” for more than 25 years.
“We kind of held back that part of the business when we had the automotive shop,” Kuhnhausen said. “We thought automotive was what we’re started in, and collision was sort of a sideline. But we figured out it was really our passion. We love the collision side. And after 26 years, we were ready for a change, a new challenge.”
In 2014, the two turned their mechanical shop clientele over to another trusted shop in town, and now focus solely on the collision repair business, including joining the Fix Auto USA network of shops. The two say the asTech gets plenty of use at Fix Auto Springfield, helping their shop spot trouble codes and other needed resets they might otherwise miss.
“We scan about 95 percent of our vehicles,” Kuhnhausen said. “Boy, that has bailed us out a few times. I love asTech.”
Speed means equipment gets plenty of use
Ankeny Autobody1 in Ankeny, Iowa, does its own alignment and tire work in-house, and shop owner Mark Martin points to the company’s Hunter alignment equipment as one thing he wouldn’t want to do without.
“This thing is probably the piece of equipment that gets used the most in this place,” Martin said, as he walks through the 15,000-square-foot shop. “It’s awesome for lifting cars up, and of course for doing alignments, and it’s quick. You can get vehicles up in the air quickly. So it’s used a lot for our blueprinting as well.”
Nitrogen system reduces materials costs
As he walks through one of his company’s six shops in Oregon, Bret Bothwell of Central Auto Body points to one of that location’s keys to success: a Nitroheat system in the paint shop that converts oxygen to heated nitrogen.
“You can do two things with this,” Bothwell said. “First, you can fill your nitrogen tanks for your bumper plastic welders instead of buying it. But it also improves transfer efficiency of your paint materials. More paint hits and stays on the panel, so it’s better for the environment and reduces materials costs. Because it’s heated, it makes your flash times a little faster, and the paint and clearcoat lay on a car better, look a little better.”
It all comes down to people
Perhaps not surprisingly, when asked what one thing in their business shop owners said they wouldn’t want to be without, many of them point to their staff.
“The most important thing is my employees,” Tom Fleming of Fleming’s Body & Paint in Salem, Ore., said. “I want them to have respect for the shop and enjoy their work. If you have one bad employee, it can influence two or three other guys.”
“The first thing that comes to mind that I wouldn’t want to be without is our trustworthy employees,” said Jim McCoy, who along with his wife Dawn, owns Lents Body Shop, the 15-employee business they acquired in Portland, Ore., in 2016. “We can trust our crew. Dawn and I can leave for a meeting and trust that everything will run just like when we’re here. We’d been working toward that. It took us a while to get there, but we’re there now. We take off for a few days and don’t get a phone call.”
That has developed in part because of the company’s focus on leadership training within the business.
“Our tagline is: building better humans,” McCoy said of a “20 group” he participates in that currently is focused on employee development (a 20 group is a type of industry meet-up organization). “We want to develop and empower employees to work with customers and make decisions without having to look for a manager. It’s about seeing people as people, not objects. It’s lot easier to be mad or yell or be upset at an object than it is a person. So you stop and think and treat people better. I think employees really appreciate it.”
The company conducts quarterly team-building activities such as barbecues, an annual weekend camping trip, Warrior Dash, and a video-game themed event at a Buster & Dave’s.
“Money is not always the way to keep people,” McCoy said. “We are just building a good solid team. We try to include the spouses and kids, get everyone involved.”
“It helps make this a place that people enjoy coming to,” Dawn McCoy said. “It’s not just about working, getting a paycheck and going home. We feel if you treat your employees right, and do right for them, that’s going to carry over to the customers.”
Twenty group offers needed insights
Fifteen years after he opened a family-run autobody business, Kevin Morse of Elite Collision Repair in Battle Ground, Wash., said the knowledge he’s gained from joining an Axalta-sponsored “business council” (20 group) last fall is the one thing he wouldn’t want to be without at this point.
“Up until that point, there were so many chinks in my armor that I have filled in to protect not only myself, my technicians and my company, but to protect the customer, too,” Morse said. “Ignorance is not an option.”
He said the group is led by industry trainer and consultant Mike Anderson.
“We meet four times a year, all over the United States, and it’s pretty intense,” Morse said. “Man, I thought I knew my stuff and was running a pretty good operation. But surrounding yourself with the most progressive shops out there can be eye-opening in terms of what you can improve. It’s been so fun to meet people who are excited about this industry, and who have the same sort of thought mentality that I do.”
A shop tour and discussion at one of the council’s meetings, for example, convinced Morse of the benefits of using a dustless sanding vacuum system. He’d had such a system installed in the shop initially, but hadn’t been using it.
“I came back and bought the entire shop the tools they needed to use it,” Morse said. “The guys didn’t have to purchase anything. We showed them the benefit of using it, and we’re keeping the shop a lot cleaner.”
When he looks ahead, Morse said he’s more interested in improving processes and production within his shop rather than adding more locations.
“The business council has been a good reminder that there’s always things to learn and improve,” he said. “‘Not knowing’ is not an excuse when it comes to repairing cars. You need to get on board with that, with the investment in tooling and equipment and training, if you’re going to fix today’s cars. You just can’t ‘not know’ anymore.”
About 135 miles to the south of Morse’s shop, Dustin Caldwell similarly credits a 20 group for reigniting his enthusiasm for his collision repair business.
“At times, I just allowed the insurance industry to kind of bully me and ruin my day,” said Caldwell, the second-generation owner of Old Dominion Collision Repair Center in Eugene, Ore.
That’s changed in the last three years, he said, thanks to his involvement in a Coyote Vision Group that enables Caldwell to regularly interact and compare business performance numbers with successful shop owners around the country.
“Every day I’m grateful for it,” Caldwell said. “I’m meeting with store owners who are really enjoying what they are doing, and who are profitable. I wasn’t even sure you could be profitable in this industry. But seeing it was possible, and based on the conversations we have at those meetings, I decided I just needed to be smarter and not let it get to me. It’s made it fun. It’s like a game of chess, figuring out how to strategically end up on the winning side of the equation.” •
John Yoswick, a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore., who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988, is also the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (www.CrashNetwork.com). He can be contacted by email at john@CrashNetwork.com.
