The summer Collision Industry Conference (CIC) was held July 23 in Philadelphia, PA, with hundreds of attendees from around the country.
The theme for the day: total losses. Most of the committees presenting at the day-long meeting sought to address issues related to total losses from each committee’s specific angle.
Early in the meeting, for example, CIC Chairman Dan Risley of CCC Intelligent Solutions shared some of his company’s data detailing the increased percentage of vehicles being declared total losses. The CIC Governmental Committee then looked at some of the variation in state laws regarding total loss determination and salvage titling.
The most impassioned discussion of the day, however, came during an afternoon open mic session and had nothing to do with total losses. One by one, about a dozen CIC attendees came to the microphone to criticize I-CAR’s leadership for what they perceive as the training organization’s failure to hear the voice of smaller independent collision repair businesses, and a lack of representation by single-shop collision repair businesses on the I-CAR Board of Directors.
Kansas shop owner Kena Dacus, for example, said about 70% of U.S. shops are independent single-shop operators, so she was “super discouraged” when she learned recently not a single I-CAR board member owns or works for such a shop. She was among more than 30 people who wrote a letter to I-CAR raising concerns about that, but said she felt the “canned” letter she received in response didn’t address her concerns.
Kyle Thompson, who became I-CAR CEO earlier this year, took responsibility for the response letter. He said he heard and appreciated the feedback CIC participants were voicing at the meeting, and said he would take that back to the board.
Associations, Thompson said, usually have a variety of types of businesses as members, so there was concern that an executive director would be representing more than just collision repairers, when the I-CAR board already has prescribed representation from those other industry segments. Thompson also noted that I-CAR’s response letter to Dacus — and the others who raised similar concerns — invited alternative board nominations, but in the 30-day window for that, no single-shop owners were nominated.
Stay tuned to Autobody News for John Yoswick's full coverage of the July 23 CIC meeting.
John Yoswick