Body shops also facing acute tech shortage

A growing shortage of body shop technicians could create one of the most serious staffing problems that fixed ops managers will face in the next few years.

Nick Notte, senior vice president of I-CAR, the Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Repair, which provides collision repair training and education, says thousands of body shop techs are leaving the industry each year and are not being replaced at the same rate.

"I won't say it is an epidemic today in the collision repair industry, but it is getting close," Notte told Fixed Ops Journal. "The average age of a [body shop] tech is approaching 50. It's difficult work, and they retire or move out of the industry."

Job website Monster.com lists more than 1,000 openings around the country for body shop technicians at new-vehicle dealerships, independent shops and fleet operations. Among them are 24 openings, as of mid-July, at dealerships operated by Penske Automotive Group, the second-largest U.S. dealership group.

Such groups and other large employers often provide a long list of spiffs to attract and retain collision techs. Some companies pay body shop technicians signing bonuses of as much as $5,000, subsidize the cost of techs' tools and training, and offer other generous benefits.

Body shop techs have one of the toughest jobs at a dealership. They touch everything from the fenders to the frame rails — a vehicle's electrical system, critical safety equipment, powertrain and suspension system.

Fixing wrecked vehicles is physically taxing and can be mentally stressful. Removing mangled body panels, shattered glass and broken plastic components is tough on a tech's body.

At the same time, keeping up to date on technology and tools creates considerable pressure. The goal is for a tech to return a badly damaged vehicle to pre-crash condition without a major, time-consuming reworking. A body shop's profit margin is closely connected to how fast it can fix a vehicle and get it back to its owner.

In 2016, I-CAR estimated that at least 56,000 body shop jobs were unfilled at the nation's 34,000 collision repair facilities. Although more recent figures are not available, the strengthening economy might have pushed the number of collision tech vacancies even higher.

At Thomas Chevrolet in North Bedford, Pa., the collision center has had two open tech positions for seven months, says body shop manager Jay Flick. He cites a decline in trade school education while parents push their children to go to college. But he notes that a productive collision tech can earn more than $100,000 a year.

"I've been in this business for 23 years, and it seems like there is a decline of quality techs," Flick says. "Over the last 10 years, it has gotten worse and worse."

Flick says his dealership has found that advertising tech openings in its body shop isn't the most effective way to attract applicants. Instead, he says, the store relies on word of mouth in its market and works with vocational and technical schools to identify job candidates.

"We are going to vo-tech schools and hiring students and getting them and training them from the ground up," Flick says. "That seems to be the only option most of the time."

I-CAR's Notte predicts the technician shortage could ease even as new technology makes vehicles more complicated.

"We look at parents' view of collision repair, the increasingly complex construct of the vehicle and the fact that there are so many connected devices, so many computers" on cars and trucks, Notte says. "Suddenly parents are looking at collision repair, and maybe the automotive field in general, as being very worthy of their children serving it."