By Steve McLinden
Insurance claims for the violent hailstorm that slammed into the western portion of the Dallas-Fort Worth area this past spring have exceeded the $1.3 billion mark, but a large number of delayed claims still coming in indicate that tally could be pushed to as high as $2 billion, say local insurers and repair-shop owners, who are working through a backlog of hail jobs expected to last through the summer.
While those loud “thunks” caused by golfball-sized to softball-sized hail pummeling thousands of Tarrant County vehicles spelled the blues for claimants, they represented a golden opportunity for body shops and other dent-repair businesses, most of which still have a garage full of hail work three months after the March storm.
“The hail was like music to our ears,” said Chad Smith, 44, owner of Dent Dynamics. “Those stones are like dollar signs in our business.” Smith wasted no time in finding a suitable shop space within hours of the event, jumping on a 10,000-square-foot former repair-shop lease building at 3650 Garner Blvd. in Pantego, a town flanked on three sides by the hard-hit city of Arlington.
The pop-up hail-repair shop was up and running in just a few days. Its opening marked the convergence of three seasoned former body shop managers from throughout Texas. Smith had run First Impressions in Forney, west of Dallas, while Don Andrews, the shop’s marketing whiz and utility man has managed several shops in his time. Colleague Shannon Allum, a 15-year repair-shop veteran, made a name for himself at his own shop in his native stomping grounds of East Texas before becoming a freelance tech for the better part of the last 15 years.
Unlike most of the paintless dent personnel who quickly descend on hail-stricken areas, the three had strong body-shops skill and numerous industry certifications. For his part, the I-CAR Gold-certified Smith, 44, has 25 years of experience in collision-repair, refinishing, professional estimating and paintless dent repair.
The shop had eight techs try out at the shop thus far, including one from Costa Rica, but none of them measured up except veteran Allum. Some never worked from the inside of a vehicle, some seemed satisfied with substandard work, while others couldn’t even remove a door panel (they’d had others do that for them in body shops), Andrews said.
One took well over an hour to take off such a panel, he added. Smith, by contrast, had removed the driver-side door of a Chevy Tahoe in less than 20 minutes early on the same steamy mid-June day that Automotive Report visited his shop.
“It’s just that our quality expectations are so high,” Andrews said. “There’s a million ways to do it wrong and only one way to do it right.”
Consumers need to be wary of many of the paintless-dent fly-by-night population that came to town.
“You see some of these guys working out of a tent,” Andrews says. “We have a fixed location here with plenty of storage and lighting — and a lot of combined expertise.”
The shop uses what some consider the Cadillac of estimating systems, the pricey Audatex Estimating platform. While it’s a big fixed expense, “it is worth every penny,” said Smith. The Audatex program results in faster, more accurate estimating and allows shops to better coordinate repairs with insurers and adjusters to accommodate those increasingly demanding cycle times, he said.
However, if it is between meeting insurer cycle times and completing the job right, the latter always wins with his precision team, Smith emphasized. It’s not unusual for the shop to double and even triple the often too-conservative allowances made by insurers. After the recent storm, one adjuster estimated a repair at $1,600 but the end tab was $6,000. That is, if it was done right, he said.
“We had to keep sending that insurance company supplements; we won’t stop until a vehicle is restored to pre-loss condition, and we certainly won’t try to speed up the cycle time just so insurers can save on rental-car costs.”
The shop can also do some basic body work and part painting, which it performs at nearby partner body shops. It’s not unusual for Smith to pick up or drop off customers throughout the vast DFW region or travel to another local city to work on a job there, operating out of the business’ “splash” purple-painted mobile unit. The shop has four satellite locations within other body shops in the area, in Dallas, Garland, Mansfield and Carrollton.
The hail season is over for now, but the spring hailstorm was so strong, it killed flamingos and dozens of other birds and animals at the Fort Worth Zoo. Smith said he’ll probably stay at the present location for up to another year and a half where he’ll perform regular body work should hail jobs wane, he said
Andrews, who is tending to ongoing health issues, is limited in the number of days he works, and he’s not sure how long he’ll stay in the business. But his work is also a therapy of sorts for him: “I would do it for free, I enjoy it that much.”
Shortly after the storm, Andrews went door to door in some of the hardest-hit areas of Arlington, enjoying more than a 50-percent success ratio in drumming up business.
“I’ve even had to tell him to stop bringing new business in the door,” said owner Smith. “He did his job too well…we are full.”
The shop website (www. dentdynamicsdfw.com) features information on the staff, frequently asked questions and tips for making a claim. “It is unlawful for an insurance company or their representatives to require or steer you to have your car repaired by any specific company,” one particularly helpful one said. “Do not feel pressured into using one of these companies if you are not comfortable with them. Their preferred vendors will be required to collect your full deductible.”
Debt Dynamics’ shop phone number, incidentally, is a hard-to-forget 1-877-BIG-HAIL. The shop motto: “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of a low price has been forgotten.” •
