Every Line on the File: A Hail Estimating Book for New Estimators

A car came back eight months after delivery with the clear coat lifting along the roof rail. Fixing it cost the shop somewhere between five and eight hundred dollars.

The line that would have prevented it was a door weatherstrip R&I at .6. It was never written, so it was never done.

Nothing about that line is hard. You have to know it belongs there, and when you're new, nobody hands you a list. That car is why the book opens where it does.

NOW ON KINDLE · $4.99

Every Line on the File

Hail Estimating from the Ground Up

19 chapters, about 41,000 words. Free to read with Kindle Unlimited. Paperback to follow.

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Why I wrote it

I wrote this because I have found information can be hard to come by in this industry. Especially for people interested in entering it or already starting out.

Most of what I know about writing a hail file I had to go find. Some of it came from people who took the time to show me. A lot of it came from cars like the one with the roof rail.

The lines that get missed on hail files usually aren't the big ones. Dent counts get argued over. Access gets forgotten, and the R&I chains, where one part has to come off to reach the next, are where most of the unwritten money is.

Chapter one starts with a line I still hold to: "An estimate is not a form, nor is it the same on any car. It's the point in which we begin the negotiation."

What's inside

The whole hail file, from the first look at the car to the last supplement.

• Reading damage under a PDR light, and why outdoor counts come in short
• Inspection and scoping, including dent counts, bands, and oversize
• Photos that actually show a dent
• The PDR matrix, and what it does and doesn't pay for
• Repair, replace, or conventional
• When to stop and look up a procedure, and how to challenge the database through DEG
• Access and R&I chains
• Refinish, blends, and what comes with a new panel
• Parts
• Building a file an appraiser can follow, and writing line notes
• Defending the file, supplements, and total losses
• Getting work and getting better

The back of the book has a glossary, my own hail scope sheet, a photo checklist, a research trigger list, and a bibliography.

Two from the book

The chapter on light starts with a hood I counted around forty in a parking lot. Under the light in the bay, the same hood was over ninety. Nobody added dents. That chapter is about why outdoor counts come in short, and how to read damage under a PDR light.

The chapter on knowing what you don't know has an EQE that sat for a day and a half because nobody could figure out how to open the hood. The release is behind the trim under the steering column. The same chapter covers when to stop and look up a procedure.

Who it's for

New estimators in auto hail repair and PDR. PDR techs moving into writing. Collision estimators picking up hail for the first time, shop staff who want to understand what the estimator is doing, and anyone thinking about getting into the hail business.

If you own a shop or run production, hand it to the estimator you're bringing on. That way your own training has something to build on, and the first few weeks aren't spent explaining what the matrix pays for.

How to get it

Every Line on the File: Hail Estimating from the Ground Up is $4.99 on Kindle, and free to read if you have Kindle Unlimited. A paperback is to follow.

If you read it, I'd like to hear what you'd add. The estimators who've been doing this longer than me will have lines I missed.