Pennsylvania and national trade groups this week honored repair shop owner and industry advocate Gerald “Rick” Dotterer, who died suddenly Saturday after contracting COVID-19. He was 63.
A second-generation shop owner, Dotterer ran Royersford, Pa.-based Dotterer Auto Body and also served as treasurer of the national Coalition for Collision Repair Excellence. He also was a longtime person in the Pennsylvania Collision Trade Guild.
“It's with heartfelt condolences we are forced to say farewell to some very long time friend and collision repair advocate who worked tirelessly to safeguard consumer's rights for any safe and proper automobile repair,” the PCTG wrote inside a Monday Facebook post.
“He did a lot of what we call ‘activist work,'” PCTG member and CCRE Vice President Stephen Behrndt said in an interview Tuesday. He called Dotterer “very consumer-oriented.”
Behrndt said he and Dotterer traveled Pennsylvania together, holding monthly sessions with respect to the PCTG. The duo taught repairers how you can calculate and charge for their actual paint material usage instead of applying an arbitrary hourly rate multiplied by refinish time.
“We did that for several years,” Behrndt said.
Behrndt said he and Dotterer also spread this message nationally on behalf of CCRE.
“We taught the same class,” he said.
Behrndt, who penned the Facebook post on behalf of the PCTG, observed there: “This writer traveled many miles alongside Rick Dotterer and may attest to his exceptional personality and openness to improve the planet around him.”
Pennsylvania Collision Trade Guild would like to express our sincere sympathy to the friends and family of Rick…
Posted by PCTG – PA Collision Trade Guild on Monday, February 22, 2021
A 2009 Bodyshop Business article featured a Dotterer and Behrndt CCRE lesson on paint and materials invoicing. Dotterer known as the per-paint-hour method a money loser and said he used “cost plus mark-up,” based on BodyShop Business. The article later reported:
“Over the years Rick traveled throughout Pennsylvania in addition to nationally to assist educate auto body repair shop owners on consumer protection and business management,” Behrndt wrote for that PCTG. “Another generation shop owner Rick held an in-depth knowledge of the efforts necessary to succeed in a business beyond third party control. Collision repair independence was always a constant objective as Rick was always open and generous with his time for you to help anyone looking for guidance.”
Dotterer graduated from Pottsgrove High School and began working for his father, Gerald Dotterer, in the then-Pottstown, Pa.-based Dotterer Auto Body.
“Rick created a passion for fixing cars, so when his father retired, he continued the company and eventually gone to live in Royersford,” an obituary on the Shalkop, Grace & Strunk Funeral Home website states.
Behrndt called Rick Dotterer a “hands-on” repairer. “He worked the ground,” Behrndt said. The store was “like a mom-and-pop business,” and Dotterer was still being involved in its day-to-day activities, including fixing vehicles himself.
In the PCTG Facebook post, Behrndt described Dotterer like a “special person” who had been “born using the unique capacity to strike up a conversation with anyone in any place at any time. Simply standing in line, sitting at a bar, browsing an airport, opening a door would provide a chance for Rick to chat with someone making a friend by having a discussion on a multitude of topics.”
Dotterer is survived by his 30-year companion Renee Harris; his children, Mindy Clark and Scott Harris; father, Gerald E. Dotterer; brothers Randall and Robert Dotterer; and three grandchildren.
“His family and the friends were always his priority,” Behrndt wrote in the PCTG Facebook post.
Funeral arrangements are private, but condolences could be left online in the Shalkop, Grace & Strunk Funeral Home website. In lieu of flowers, the household asks that donations can be created in Rick Dotterer’s name to Paoli Hospital.
