Collision repair draws danger and damage. It’s the perfect storm of paint, gas, flame, destruction, and crime. Not a great problem to have.
Start with the money involved: land and buildings; equipment and materials; information and product. Even an average shop pushes into seven figures. And when loss occurs, it definitely does.
Then consider this: few industries outside of automotive do work where the job itself is the source of the potential problems. Shops routinely hold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damaged vehicles, which even then still attract thieves for everything from catalytic converters and airbags to entire cars. In one case, a thief broke into a body shop, piled one of the vehicles with equipment and tools, and drove off.
Put it all together and preparation isn’t optional. In an uncertain world, the question is: what will this day bring?
Just about anything, really.
These Risks Are Routine, Not Hypothetical
Autobody News research revealed recurring risk areas with real-world examples:
- Theft or burglary at body shops in California, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Maryland. In two instances, robbers gained access by crashing into gates or a building.
- Fires in Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia, some resulting in gutting the shop or a death. The Virginia blaze damaged eight vehicles.
- Vehicles found at shops after hit-and-runs in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York (twice), Pennsylvania, and Washington. The police blotter also includes armed robbery, cocaine and fentanyl traffic, embezzlement and vandalism in Arizona, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee.
A Starkville, Miss. body shop was recently both burglarized and vandalized by a pair of criminals — one of them on probation and wearing an ankle monitor, a local report said. Video from Illinois showed a man threatening police officers with a gun from the driver’s side of an MSO’s glass repair van.
Canadian law enforcement saw extortion letters sent only to body shops, though this turned out to be more likely a hoax. Given our dependence on it, technology is always a source of possible loss, from work stoppage to data and privacy issues. Sometimes the risk is just random, like a bus crashing into a body shop in Oakland.
The problem is often ongoing. For instance, a vehicle theft ring in Ontario, Canada, ran for two years using legal freight forwarding and hired drivers to ship cars out of the country.
At times, issues are tangential to your business or nearby. An abandoned paint and body shop in Florida caught fire, resulting in a death. A second Florida shop saw its business affected after a SWAT team deployed for a five-hour standoff at a building in the area. A Nebraska collision shop fire caught from a domestic dispute spilling over to the site. A homeless man died in the doorway of a Mississippi MSO in an overnight blizzard.
And expertise might not help: a fire in Pennsylvania occurred at a body shop owned by volunteer firefighters.
Using Law Enforcement and Legal Resources as Prevention Tools
The point isn’t the crime itself. The point is to prevent or inhibit it.
Shops have options — consider them action items.
Toronto-based Northbridge Insurance offers a 21-page risk mitigation checklist tailored to auto repair. Many basics are already required by municipalities, insurance, or property management for things like fire prevention. If you splurge for the good stuff, it can bring other benefits: a shop for sale in North Carolina noted its new Kidde fire suppression system.
Get local law enforcement to do a walk-through of your business, which is usually free. Look for resources like these in Seminole County, Florida, and Amarillo, Texas. In fact, there’s an entire organization devoted to work like this.
Then, have police visit your shop before they show up to seize a vehicle involved in a crime. A body shop in upstate New York donated to a holiday shop with a cop program where local first responders paired with kids to buy gifts.
You can then find more ways to forge relationships. A veteran and first responder discount is an obvious option. Also, give to their charity drives. Ask about occasional drivebys to keep a visible presence. And don’t forget about social outreach: Invite them and their families to a quarterly onsite barbecue.
Tony Mancini is selling his shop in Schenectady, NY, and reports a robust relationship with police personnel. He has cameras outside and has developed interactions with the police department, partly by being involved in collision repair trade groups or local business associations.
“I do work for those guys,” he said. “A lot of the guys with the police department bring their cars here.”
Security Systems, Services, and Structured Risk Mitigation
Seek local security services, which may offer benefits such as lower cost, specialization, and ex-military on staff. MSOs may default to with national firms, such as Allied Universal, in Conshohocken, Penn., or Stockholm-based Securitas. Alarm providers include ADT, Boca Raton, and Brinks, Richmond, Va. A live presence is pricey, so perhaps choose overnight hours only to reduce costs.
Find companies with focused or major work in collision. Northbridge’s packet covers fire, flood, general liability, robbery and theft, and cybercrime, and it’s exclusively for issues specific to auto repair.
Southern California-based iDter (“eye deter”) offers Nio Guardian, an AI-based video system, for client groups among larger truck repair layouts and dealerships. Guardian Alarm has an auto dealership vertical.
Amarok in South Carolina is in 9,000 locations,— 21% automotive, according to the company. Clients include Caliber Collision, LKQ, and a Philly parts seller. Its product is a 10-foot electrified fence and horizontal cabling, monitored by software, cameras optional. Alarms, lights, sirens and maintenance are part of its packages, said national account director Marc Palluck.
Marc Palluck emphasizes that keeping criminals off the property is the most effective form of theft prevention.“You hear business cameras don’t stop thefts, that it’s for after the fact, to review footage,” he said. “The data we have is we [prevent] 99% of theft because they move on; that business is no longer an easy target.”
Cameras run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long. The system dispatches to law enforcement if needed. The price depends on lot size and number of cameras, among other factors.
“The ultimate perimeter security,” Palluck said. “Keep criminals off the property — no unauthorized access.”
Amarok data shows average dollar loss per theft for shops is $7,700; 1,200 catalytic converters nationally are stolen each month. It lists five best practices as reviewing perimeter, lighting, equipment, screening workers and contractors, and choosing multiple security options.
The company’s roots are in training guard dogs — Amarok is a mythical dire wolf for the Inuit people — though it doesn’t offer that anymore. (Still an overall option from others for shops, though!)
Tomasz Borys, vice president of strategy for Northern California-based Deep Sentinel, echoed Palluck’s call to keep criminals away.
“We provide a proactive method in preventing crime,” Borys said. Sentinel’s AI-based cameras and sensors set off alarms and garner trespassers attention from human monitors. Video from clients in Colorado, Texas and five other states show it working.
Though to be honest, it would also help if that Colorado shop locked its gate.
Similar to iDter, Deep Sentinel offers parking lot camera towers with the added element of mobility: the unit can be moved. The company gets creative with layers of deterrent, and blogs occasionally on issues related to crime and collision repair.
Borys suggested the company’s $50 per camera per month beats a live presence on price, even if only a patrol drive-by, and “sometimes one guard is not enough.”
Deep Sentinel has raised $38 million according to Tracxn, most recently in June. Jeff Bezos was a Series A investor in 2017.
Why Risk Mitigation is Becoming an Industry Expectation
Long-discussed industry shifts — car complexity and cost, modernizing shops, growing professionalism — are now pulling risk mitigation into the current.
Collision centers will boost [or begin!] prevention practices cited above, upgrading security simply to compete. Wider calls from consumer groups, property managers, insurers will issue for shops to get with the programs.
Sometimes it takes problems to highlight the danger, as we tend not to act until something goes wrong. A body shop owner of 10 years whose shop burned down lamented to local news, “I can do nothing, I can do nothing.”
As the government gets involved, it too will touch collision repair. A Pennsylvania lawmaker recently introduced legislation to create an alert system to notify repair facilities of possible hit-and-run vehicle. Collision centers would be required to report cars that match the descriptions.
Collision repair has always carried risk. What’s changing is how visible and costly that risk has become.
Paul Hughes