Many that have needed to take their car into a shop for repairs, know it hasn’t been easy lately.
Stephanie Clark with InterCity Autobody says they used to help clients within a week or two — but that’s changed this year, she said.
“We’re seeing a lot more claims and harder-hit claims. So, we’re seeing $20,000 (to) $30,000 hits, and that’s because there’s a lot more that’s included in the repair,” she said.
Those claims mean more work, more parts, more expertise, and therefore longer waits, with some serious jobs keeping clients in tow for about two months, Clark said.
Denis Cloutier, the executive director of the Automotive Trades Association of Manitoba, said that’s pretty typical now.
“The length of time to get your car repaired is a problem — not just Manitoba or nationally, it’s North American-wide,” he said.
Some of it has to do with more people driving newer cars, which experts say are growing in complexity.
“We’re seeing a ton of newer vehicles. We’re taking ’20, ’23, 2024s,” Clark said. “(They) have so much more electrical. There’s at ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) calibrations that need to be included into this now. All of the sensors — do they need to be reprogrammed? Are we replacing them? It is definitely making them a little bit harder.”
“The type of repairs are required simply require more parts and more components and leads to also increased (difficulty),” said Jean-François Champagne, the CEO of the Automotive Industries Association of Canada.
Parts for newer cars are also more difficult to come by.
“They’re backordered because they’re just coming off the assembly line,” Clark said. “I’ll be sitting on a 2024 vehicle… and those parts used to be readily available. Now we’re waiting for them to come in from the States for sometimes two or three months.”
Global disruptions are also factor in getting parts, Champagne said — starting with the pandemic.
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“If you actually go back to the beginning of the pandemic, we obviously suffered large disruption in the supply chain where it got very hard to be able to get parts into Canada,” he said, adding wars like that in Ukraine also contribute.
Technology has also proved somewhat problematic.
“More recently, people may have heard about the CDK global cyberattack. So a software infrastructure platform that is very much used by many in the supply chain — namely at the dealership level — who also supply parts to collision repair centers. So that also recently increased a bit the difficulty to obtain parts in a timely fashion,” Champagne said.
Also not readily available are the hands and expertise needed to work on the structural components of cars, or even handle various materials.
Clark said because of certifications required by Manitoba Public Insurance for such things, InterCity Autobody only has one technician that can do everything.
The shop could also use at least one more red seal technician on site, she said.
Cloutier said being short of staff is a reality that plagues the province.
“I would say that in Manitoba alone, we could probably hire 400 people tomorrow if they were available,” he said. “All the trades are struggling to attract young people to enter them, and collision repair is no different. We need a lot of people to enter our trade. The more people we have, the more they can fix cars.”
Clark knows it all too well.
“There’s not as many people entering into the trade, and so everyone’s struggling to find these technicians,” she said.
However, Champagne is hopeful.
“We’re starting to see a bit of an impact in attracting more people. I think we’re hopeful of that. But this is not going to be an easy fix. It will take time,” he said. “Time will tell.”
“It’s a four-year apprenticeship before they’re fully capable of fixing any damaged vehicle. So we’ve got a four-to-five-year runway if we start that now,” Cloutier said.
In the meantime, if someone’s car is drivable, they’re likely not going to be a priority.
“(Auto body shops) do want to get people that can’t drive their car back into their cars,” Cloutier said.
Clark calls for a little compassion as short-handed crews work their hardest and fastest to get people behind the wheel again.
“We’re trying the best we can to make it as seamless as possible, and we will always continue to do our best for our customers, because that’s who’s important,” she said.
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