Teardown Costs
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If you have a vehicle come to your shop for repairs but after you tear it down and the adjuster has a look at it it totals how much do you typically charge for your teardown?
And one more question. If you have a customer send their car to you directly from the accident scene do you teardown immediately and write a through estimate or wait on the customer to come in and sign a work order before you teardown?
Thanks Guys!also dont forget ta charge storage for each day till the ins company pics it up 😉
Hey bondo,
Yea we run a towing company too so we def. get storage charges for every day although its only $20/day (county regulated here). How much do you usually get for the teardown from the ins company?shouldnt ya get your shoprate??
Yea I do get my shop hourly rate but I’d like to get an idea of what everyone else is getting like number of hours just to make sure I’m not missing out you know? Like for instance to break down the average front end do you have a rough average of the number of hours you would regularly charge?
I had a guy working for me a little while back and he was telling me that the previous shop he worked for used to get like $500-$700 just for a teardown and I think that’s way too high personally so I just wanted to get an idea of what you guys out there that own your own shop are getting. I want to be fair but at the same time I don’t want to shortchange myself.We will tear down after we get the customer to sign a repair order only and only than.. we get 2-4 hrs on all cars we tear down at 86-90 a hr we charge 60 a day storage and all tow fees…if a customer keeps the salvage we will wave the fees for them except the towing…
We typically only charge a few hours, make way more in storage. Some places tack on $100-$150 admin fee’s, I don’t know how successfully though. It depends on the job but we as long as the customer wants it fixed at our shop we might do a bit of teardown before the adjuster arrives. Take many pictures along the way.
Rates are just going to vary. Tear downs rarely exceed an hour ($50).
Storage is $50/day and $50 admin fee. And, sometimes, i’ll tack on
another $50 (a-hole fee).[b]jimmo wrote:[/b]
[quote]We typically only charge a few hours, make way more in storage. Some places tack on $100-$150 admin fee’s, I don’t know how successfully though. It depends on the job but we as long as the customer wants it fixed at our shop we might do a bit of teardown before the adjuster arrives. Take many pictures along the way.[/quote]We charge for what we do. We also have a min $50.00 admin fee and some are higher as you said above 100-200 dollars. It depends on how much office time was spent on the job. We are successful at collecting it because we don’t let the car go without payment.
Anyone interested in seeing one of our total loss billing forms shoot me a message or email.
Whatever you do, make a profit whether you fix the car or not. It’s not a crime, immoral or otherwise. You provided a service and fixing cars isn’t the only service you provide.
It’s not uncommon for a $1000.00 – $2000.00 total loss bill at our shop. When you sit back and really think about time spent, check(s) written you’ll find these “teardown” only bills are a losing proposition.
Every situation is different….charge accordingly.
In January of this year we had an 09 Accord towed in. At first it didn’t look too bad, but once it was off the flatbed it was obviouse that it was a mess. Insurer had already assessed the damages at $12k.
First thing was that the rt front wheel was being held on by just the strut. So we had to have it dropped inside to make sure it would be able to be properly assessed ( our yard is gravel, and floor jacks don’t roll well on rocks). Second thing was that the battery was dead. So we needed to charge the Bat. Once we got the batttery charged. we tried to start the car only to have about 5 quarts of fluid dump onto the shop floor. Couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it was both trans and engine oil.
Pushed the car onto the lift to see what was going on and noticed that the door on the opposite side was ajar at the bottom and not at the top.
After all was evaluated we added another $13k in damages that the adjuster missed.
I charged for everything needed. Towing plus markup. inside storage on a rack. charge battery. waste oil cleanup and disposal. Lift charge. disassemble vehicle for assessment. Damage assessment. enter and re-write damage appraisal.I think there were a bunch of other thing that we did that we charged for, but offhand you get the idea.
Thing is, when presented with our charges. nobody questioned why we were billing what we were once we broke it down individually. All were within reason. My thoughts are that if they are paying an appraiser $50- $65 + thousand a year, and they miss that much damage, they shouldn’t be writing sheets in the first place ( and trust me, some were in plain sight). Let’s be truthful about this. The individuals that normally write sheets for the insurers have little idea what’s necessary to rebuild some of these wrecks. Why should we give our knowledge away for pennies? In all, I had 10- 12 hours handling this car. Between handling tows, moving around, cleaning up, assessing,entering and re-writing their sheet. We wound up making about $1000 doing their legwork.
[b]Kevin Campbell wrote:[/b]
[quote]In January of this year we had an 09 Accord towed in. At first it didn’t look too bad, but once it was off the flatbed it was obviouse that it was a mess. Insurer had already assessed the damages at $12k.First thing was that the rt front wheel was being held on by just the strut. So we had to have it dropped inside to make sure it would be able to be properly assessed ( our yard is gravel, and floor jacks don’t roll well on rocks). Second thing was that the battery was dead. So we needed to charge the Bat. Once we got the batttery charged. we tried to start the car only to have about 5 quarts of fluid dump onto the shop floor. Couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it was both trans and engine oil.
Pushed the car onto the lift to see what was going on and noticed that the door on the opposite side was ajar at the bottom and not at the top.
After all was evaluated we added another $13k in damages that the adjuster missed.
I charged for everything needed. Towing plus markup. inside storage on a rack. charge battery. waste oil cleanup and disposal. Lift charge. disassemble vehicle for assessment. Damage assessment. enter and re-write damage appraisal.I think there were a bunch of other thing that we did that we charged for, but offhand you get the idea.
Thing is, when presented with our charges. nobody questioned why we were billing what we were once we broke it down individually. All were within reason. My thoughts are that if they are paying an appraiser $50- $65 + thousand a year, and they miss that much damage, they shouldn’t be writing sheets in the first place ( and trust me, some were in plain sight). Let’s be truthful about this. The individuals that normally write sheets for the insurers have little idea what’s necessary to rebuild some of these wrecks. Why should we give our knowledge away for pennies? In all, I had 10- 12 hours handling this car. Between handling tows, moving around, cleaning up, assessing,entering and re-writing their sheet. We wound up making about $1000 doing their legwork.[/quote]
i like your attitude kevin good post :cheersThanks Kevin! Definitely a good response and I agree with the way you handled that car. :rock
:hunt :evil2 :cheers
just today we got 1800 buxx for a tow into the shop 6 hours tear down and the rest was storage at 75 a day… hell we nade more that the car was a total loss than if we ended up fixing it…
Tear down = $100
Storage = $50/day
Admin. = $100*A-hole fee = $100+
(Aggravation-hole) 😉
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