Industry experts say the problem will only get worse. “In 10 years I see a lot fewer stores and I see a lot more people looking for stores,” says Rick White, who coaches auto repair shop owners through his 180biz company. An industry survey conducted late last year found that 96 percent of stores reported delays, with an average schedule backlog of 3.4 weeks, compared to 1.7 weeks at the end of 2019.
If you want to understand the increasing complication in the auto repair industry, try to get a remodel of a new Audi. A car must be realigned whenever it drifts to one side or the steering wheel vibrates, a procedure that involves adjusting the suspension, which connects a car to its wheels.
A decade or so ago, that took about an hour and a half, say auto repairmen who spoke to WIRED. Today, that same procedure usually takes closer to three or four hours and can take up to nine hours. That’s because newer cars have advanced driver assistance systems, which can keep cars in their lane, detect blind spots and avoid collisions — features that require a car to have a good understanding of where it is in space. That requires repairers to calibrate the sensors and cameras in a car that underlie those advanced systems.
Some car brands can only be calibrated with specialized and expensive tools. For starters, the equipment needed to keep a car’s wheels in alignment costs costs in the $70,000 range, says Lucas Underwood, the president of L&N Performance Auto Repair in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Then you need targets that help a car’s sensors and camera systems orient themselves. These can vary by car manufacturer and cost about $30,000 per set.
All in all, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase the tools and adjust the shop to repair just a few makes of car. That’s before the cost of training employees to use those tools, with stores paying thousands each year to keep their staff certified to fix specific cars. Investing for the future can therefore reduce shop owners millions.
That investment may be worth it for a business that plans to stay open for a while, but many auto shop owners are approaching retirement. A 2019 industry survey found that nearly half of auto shop owners were 60 years of age or older. And 30 percent of store owners were thinking of leaving the industry by 2024. “You see older guys say, ‘Hey, I’ve spent enough money, so I’m not going to buy new equipment,'” says John Firm, owner of Firm Automotive, a mechanical shop in Fort Worth, Texas. “These stores don’t do the training, don’t buy the equipment, and they get left behind.” (The company is considering retiring itself.)
Laura Gay, who sold her bodyshop six years ago and now earns a living helping other owners sell theirs, paints a bleak picture of life in auto repair today. Insurance fees don’t keep pace with the repair costs of today’s complex cars, she says. Meanwhile, shops struggle to find workers as industry seniors age and young people are rejected by low starting wages. Retailers “are just fed up,” she says. “They’re physically and mentally exhausted — we’ve gone from a very simple industry to a very complex industry.”
