By Mike Davey
Hamilton, Ontario — February 14, 2017 — Collision repair is inextricably linked to the business of car rentals, so much so that average length-of-rental is often considered a proxy for repair times. Our latest survey asked readers to let us know about how rental cars are handled in their organizations.
Our next survey seeks to establish a broad look at training, including how often training is being undertaken and by whom. You can participate in the training survey here. It should take less than two minutes to fill out.
First, our survey asked “Does your facility provide rental cars to customers outside of what their insurer provides? For example, if their policy only provides a rental car for seven days, but the repair takes nine days, do you provide them with a rental car for those last two days?” A total of 46 percent of respondents indicated that they provided courtesy cars for all customers, free of charge. A further 33 percent that they did this “in some cases.” Finally, 21 percent indicated that they did not provide courtesy cars.
The next question asked repairers if they partnered directly with any rental car companies. A small majority of respondents (57 percent) indicated that they did so, with the remainder (43 percent) indicating that they did not do this.
Repairers that indicated they had one of these partnerships were asked to indicate which company they had partnered with. Enterprise Rent-A-Car was chosen by 74 percent of those respondents, with 26 percent indicating they had partnered with Discount Car and Truck Rentals.
Next we looked at average length-of-rental. It should be noted that repairers were answering this question on the fly during a web survey, rather than sitting down with a bunch of spreadsheets and actually going over the numbers. However, it does provide a good “horseback estimate” of how long rental times currently are at our respondents’ shops. In total, 57 percent indicated that the average length-of-rental was between four and seven days, with 43 percent indicating that it averaged between eight and 11 days.
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| This chart highlights repairers’ estimates of average length-of-rental at their facilities. |
Finally, we asked repairers to indicate if the average length-of-rental has increased, decreased or stayed the same in the last year. As in the question above, the results come from repairers providing estimated numbers, rather than crunching the figures generated within their facilities. A slim majority (52 percent) of repairers indicated that average length-of-rental had increased in the last year. The next largest group (29 percent) indicated that it had stayed the same. Only 19 percent of respondents believed that average length-of-rental times had decreased in the last year.
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| The chart above showcases repairers’ perceptions of average length-of-rental,{source}<br/>{/source} specifically whether it has increased, decreased or stayed the same. |
You can take part in our next survey on training at this link. It should take less than two minutes to fill out and we’ll present the results next Wednesday on collisionrepairmag.com!
