CollisionCast

Melissa Marscin, director of operations and administration for the Collision Repair Education Foundation, discusses what shop owners can do to help the collision industry technician shortage. 

Dave Ludwig, owner of Prestige Auto Body, outlines what resources and traits shop owners should look to when hiring front office staff. 

Adam Grant, owner of Xtreme Collision Center in Morrisville, Vt., discusses the importance of tracking KPIs and explains why every shop owner should be doing it. 

Your logo isn’t a brand—you are the brand, says Amy Anderson. And as the marketing director for the six-location Heppner's Auto Body in Minneapolis, she has quite a bit of experience in that realm. Building Heppner's "brand" has been a long, deliberate process that has had its ups and downs and alterations, but the brand she and her company finalized has helped set it apart in its market. In this interview, she covers how the shop defined its brand and how you can get your employees and customers to buy into that brand.

Rich Lawson, estimator at Rick Hendrick's Collision Center, talks about his post-military transition into the collision repair industry and the impact this job opportunity has had on his life.

Tired of feeling the strains of the collision repair industry’s talent shortage, the leadership team at G&C Auto Body, an 11-facility operation in California, decided to take matters into its own hands. In this episode, G&C CEO Shawn Crozat details the company’s technician and estimator apprentice programs and how growing its own talent has allowed the now $50 million-per-year family business to continue to expand.

With consolidation making the collision repair industry more competitive each year, many body shops are feeling pressure to attain OEM certifications. Mark Bochenek, I-CAR’s OEM Business Development Manager, gives his views on just how vital it is for body shops to become OEM certified.  

Darrell Amberson, a FenderBender columnist and president of operations for LaMettry's Collision in the Twin Cities, discusses the importance of industry involvement, the future of diagnostic scans, and a little drag racing.

With a new year comes new challenges—and new goals. While 2017 is sure to provide the collision repair industry with myriad challenges, FenderBender columnist Mike Anderson prefers to look to the solutions repairers can implement to not only improve their own businesses but also make the industry stronger as a whole. In this podcast Anderson discusses the 10 most critical issues that need to be met with resolutions in 2017, and how each and every shop operator across the country can help.

A long-time advocate of collision repair industry education, Jeff Peevy of the Automotive Management Institute has preached for years the importance of regular training, both for shop operators and their teams. The benefits of developing a company culture focused on continuous improvement are many, and Peevy says FenderBender’s 2016 Education & Training Survey directly reflects that. The report compared the training commitments of shops and shop operators to the many key performance metrics that are the lifeblood of these businesses. The results? Shops that commit themselves to continuous improvement do indeed improve—and outperform those that don’t.