Overheard: Several factors causing collision technician shortage

"You have multiple facets of the industry are all kind of converging together at once. You have consumer demand for a high level of technology and convenience in the cars. Repair costs are going higher and complexity is going higher. You need more skilled people. You have an aging demographic of people getting out of the industry or about to exit the industry, and you have a low level of new entrants into the arena wanting to get in there. And then you have shops that are also not really sure how to run a good operation and they're kind of fumbling through it. And they're relying on, 'Well, we always did it this way.' And what's wrong with that, right? You've got, in my opinion, ... stuff all swirling together and that can only take you so far. People are going to look at what you're doing [and] say, 'That doesn't make sense. Why would I want to get into that field?' And that's kind of where we are now. I want to be optimistic that there's a lot of good forces trying to counteract that. I think it will probably get a little bit more challenging and a little bit more difficult for all of us until we reach kind of an inflection point where then we start to come back up and get out of this." — Andrew Batenhorst, body shop manager at Pacific BMW in Glendale, Calif. on some reasons behind the technician shortage on the "Beyond the Wrench" podcast hosted by Jay Goninen, president of WrenchWay.