Las Vegas, Nevada — LKQ held its ninth annual Insurance Client Forum presentation earlier this month at the Wynn hotel during SEMA week. Headed up by Terry Fortner, the North American Vice President of Insurance, Sales and Marketing at LKQ, the presentation’s theme was “Shaping our Industry Together,” while also serving as an industry update and product showcase for partners and clients.
Major industry changes were the spotlight topics in all 10 presentations. Fortner himself addressed the vital ability to adapt to new challenges like consolidation, OE repair procedures and even the GM strike. After the reins were handed to Nick Zarcone, CEO of LKQ, the sentiment regarding these changes was reinforced.
“…for all of us—for our organizations to be successful, we need to work together,” stated Zarcone before repeating LKQ’s mission statement for all in attendance. “Everybody in this room is someway, somehow going to be impacted by these technological changes.”
Ian Musselman, the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for the company, followed soon after to pose a different strategy to cope with a changing automotive landscape: legislation. He first opened by delivering some automotive facts such as — out of the 272 million light vehicles on the roads today, 100 million have some sort of repair restriction which could manifest itself in several ways, such as embedded software or impractical repair procedures for ADAS. Musselman urged attendees to take a larger role in getting in touch with government officials to push for shared OEM information—especially when it comes to growing ADAS technology.
“We can’t take a reactionary role when dealing with legislation. By the time laws are passed, it’ll be too late,” said Musselman. “What am I asking you to do today? Ask your government officials if they’re taking a look at these hard issues. I don’t think the appetite to revisit these topics exists without a push.”
Concluded Musselman, “We need the ability for third parties to access ADAS calibration or the consumers’ life could be at risk.”
Once the importance of adaptivity and ambition were thoroughly driven home, Terry Fortner took the stage once more to address one more issue in the collision repair landscape. To mitigate the current labour shortages in the industry, Fortner announced a $25,000 US donation from LKQ to the Collision Repair Education Foundation in support of technician student education and development.
“The education foundation raises money for collision repair industry students that are learning to be technicians,” said Fortner. “That’s just one of our ways of giving back to the industry, and we think it’s the right thing to do.”
Fortner ended the presentation with the launch of the company’s Promise of Calibration, a new expansion to its product coverage to include properly operating ADAS components.
“The combination of both the Promise of Protection and the new Promise of Calibration provides an unsurpassed level of quality assurance and peace of mind to LKQ’s customers. No other parts distributor provides this level of support for its customers like LKQ,” stated Fortner.
