Observe how auto body industry worked, earned during pandemic with CCC's 2021 'Crash Course"

CCC on Wednesday released its annual “Quick studies,” and while the 2021 data might in some aspects capture a real outlier of a year, collision repairers should still hustle over and download the free industry resource.

The metrics and analysis within the document examines key trends in consumer behavior throughout the pandemic — including some that might hang in there once life returns to normal. The publication by CCC director and lead analyst Susanna Gotsch also captures and discusses broader vehicle trends such as ADAS and connectivity, which absolutely continues to develop.

“Crash Course illustrates how Covid-19 impacted our industry and also the trajectory of change moving forward,” Gotsch said in a statement Wednesday. “CCC has published Quick studies for 26 years and this edition reveals unprecedented change. And though we expect some changes like miles driven to revert to pre-pandemic levels, we project other changes will become the new baseline as photos, mobile, AI, and customer demands have reset expectations and adjusted how we work.”

We’d also refer readers to what we affectionately call “The large Chart,” which details a lot of key industry statistics on factors like labor hours, rates and parts usage for repairable vehicles during 2021 and prior years.

The data draws from the vast pool of insurer and repairer estimates within CCC. It’s likely to capture everything from initial insurer appraisals written for customers who then spend to a repairer’s 100 percent teardown blueprint for a customer-pay vehicle. So it’s certainly not an apples-to-apples comparison to your particular shop, estimate, or scenario. Nevertheless, it still offers repairers valuable context on vehicles, the and broader trends with each of them.

Also, there’s some good info that’s more absolute and estimator-neutral, for example average repairable vehicle age or number of vehicles ultimately totaled.

Here’s a few highlights:

The average repairable vehicle estimate in CCC rose nearly $200 to $3,421, up 5.5 percent, and contained per hour body rate up 1.6 % to $52.27.

Repair represented the same 39.7 percent from the total repair bill as it did in 2021, however the hypothetical average shop captured here might have replaced 0.5 parts a lot more than in 2021. They also put in an additional 0.4 hours at work on a vehicle.

Supplements arose on 60.9 percent of claims, up from 57.1 percent. The typical theoretical shop would have fixed a slightly older vehicle compared to 2021, at 6.17 years. However, additionally they might have seen the total loss percentage climb a lot more than 1 percentage indicate 20.Five percent of appraisals.

As noted above, CCC also puts 2021 inside the context of history decade, in that chart as well as in other deeper-dive analyses.

For example, repairers are encountering far fewer quick-fix repairable vehicles than ever before. This year, 27.4 percent of all repairable appraisals described 10 hours of work or less. By 2021, that percentage had fallen to 22.1. In 2021, it was also reduced, at 22.7 percent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of estimates needing a lot more than 50 hours of work rose from 9.1 % in 2011 to 10.1 % in 2021 and 2021.

“Analysis of repairable appraisal data from CY 2011 to CY 2021 also shows the overall growth in the typical quantity of parts replaced per claim and also the average quantity of labor hours per claim,” CCC wrote. “Between CY 2011 and CY 2021, the percent of repairable appraisals with >0 and <=10 labor hours fell by -5.3 percent, while those with 30 or even more labor hours per claim increased nearly 3 percentage points.”

And CCC found more parts replaced on the quickest repairs in that time. The typical 2021 estimate with 10 hours or a smaller amount of labor time still needed 0.7 more components when compared with 2011. For 2021, the outcomes were similar.

“Nearly 3 or more additional parts typically were replaced on appraisals with 30 or even more labor hours per claim between CY 2011 and CY 2021,” CCC wrote. “Individual cost-per-replacement part is continuing to grow on average at least 1 % annually during the last several years, however the average cost per part for current model year vehicles has been rising fastest, suggesting part prices in aggregate may rise further in the future.”

Download the 2021 “Crash Course” here, compare your shop’s experience, and consider what all this means for 2021.

“CCC is committed to providing the industry with information and data to produce more visibility into what's ahead, informing understanding to positively impact business outcomes,” CCC wrote in a news release. It drew focus on “ey topics” including: