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CCC releases 2018 ‘Crash Course’; use free data to plan auto body repair business strategy

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Business Practices | Education | Insurance | Market Trends | Repair Operations
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CCC on Wednesday released its 2018 edition of “Crash Course,” an annual report which uses the No. 1 information provider’s library of estimate data to track collision repair industry trends.

The document also examines other macroeconomic results with ramifications on the collision repair industry, such as miles driven (which can help predict accident frequency) or the price of used cars (which can predict total loss trends).

CCC provides data that S&P 500 companies like LKQ use to evaluate their own financial performance, and your business — be it major MSO or mom-and-pop shop — should take advantage of the free research to strategize for 2018 and beyond.

The main event for an auto body shop is probably going to be Part 4 of the “Crash Course” document, the “Repair” section. It contains metrics like average body labor rate ($48.85/hour, a statistic derived from estimate charges that doesn’t distinguish between discounted DRP rates and door rates), average value of vehicles declared a total loss ($9,125 if you throw out Hurricane Harvey victims), and cycle time (keys-to-keys averaged 9.5 days for DRP shops, down from 9.7 in 2016 but a full day more than 2013).

This is stuff that matters not just to an owner but to an estimator and technician (particularly a piece-rate one). Here’s one of our go-to charts from the annual document to give you a further taste:

Valuable stats can be found throughout the four-part report (the “Crash” portion is focuses on bodily injury and PIP/Medpay claims, but it’s kind of interesting to see how the “other half” of the crash claims process lives), as can some analysis from CCC. This year’s data is organized around the “full auto ownership life cycle,” according to an executive summary:

We’ll begin with the ‘Buy’ decision, exploring why consumers buy vehicles, how they decide which vehicle to buy, how they pay for the vehicle, how they choose to insure the vehicle, and how auto industry sales have fared to date and what they may look like in the future. …

When the vehicle is acquired, we move into the ‘Drive’ phase. In this section, we’ll explore how driving has changed and how it may change in the future. …

With the focus on crash avoidance and, ultimately, vehicle autonomy, will auto ‘Crash’(es) and fatalities fall? And how quickly? …

When the vehicle does crash, and needs ‘Repair’, what further changes can we expect in terms of the types of tooling, training, and investment required of collision repairers? How will repair frequency and costs change? 

Download the 2018 “Crash Course” for free here.

More information:

2018 CCC “Crash Course”

2017 CCC “Crash Course”

Past “Crash Course” reports

More information:

The CCC booth at SEMA 2017 is shown. (John Huetter/Repairer Driven News)

One of the key charts for collision repairers to study in CCC’s “Crash Course” is this annual roundup of repairable damage appraisal statistics. (Provided by CCC)

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