The Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS) performed a new study to determine where the facts are when the question of body shops not meeting insurance company’s expectations for the time it should take to repair a vehicle. This has always been imbalanced and PDR Technicians and body shops nationwide will always stand on opposite sides of what is a reasonable amount of time that it should take to repair a vehicle.

The survey was conducted by SCRS who analyzed repair data provided by CCC Information Services Inc. and Mitchell International, relative to hours per claim in the fourth quarter of 2014, and compared those statistics to the average length of rental from Enterprise Rent-A-Car and The Hertz Corporation over that same time period.

While cross referencing the data provided different results, no combination of data sets supported an expectation reaching 3.0 hours per day. (Results were obtained by dividing the average hours per claim by the average length of rental.) For example, comparing the CCC information with that of Enterprise showed that, on average, a 30 hour job took an estimated 15 days to produce—giving a median multiplier of 0.5.

The results were similar to those of Mitchell’s Auto Physical Damage report for first quarter 2013. In that study, the median multiplier across 49 states was 0.47 with a standard variation of 0.05.

“We recognize the challenges associated with drawing conclusions from two disparate data sources,” added Luis Alonso, SCRS industry issues committee chairman. “Our conclusions are going to have a higher standard of deviation because we are averaging averages rather than raw data, and also because the data sets may cover two different spans of information.

“For instance, [insurance provider] estimate data is based on overall uploaded estimates which will reflect some vehicles that may not be repaired, and rental company data is based on repaired vehicles that did utilize a rental.