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Originally Posted by aa2033
I have 5 body shops and we are booked 2 months out at all of them with a backlog of work. We do mostly insurance work, and people continue to crash their cars, some more than they used to. It seems like everyone forgot how to drive when they were in quarantine.
Part shortages also mean we're keeping cars on our lots that can't be put back together because parts are on backorder with no ETA so we have less parking.
We're fixing more cars, with less staff than we ever have. Body technicians and estimators are extremely hard to come by. Technicians are getting older and retiring and there aren't any younger folk wanting to do labor intensive jobs anymore. Insurance companies laid off most of their employees so we're doing more work for the insurance companies than we used to also.
The whole industry like many others is in a rough place. We want to get to everyone and fix everyone's cars quickly, we just can't. We're trying to make sure we don't burn out the people we have left.
Hope that helps give you some insight on our end.
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Great post - really provides some of the perspectives "from the other side." Also, good on you for trying to not burn out your staff.