We had a car come back to us about eight months after it came in. Clear coat was lifting along the bottom edge of the roof rail, right where the weather strip sits. Customer noticed it one day in a parking lot.
The repair was great otherwise. Color matched, we thought. Clear coat coverage was good.
When we delivered it the customer was satisfied. Everything looked good. There was a time bomb in it we didn't know about, which is that we didn't pull the door seals.
Pulled the paperwork when it came back in and we didn't get paid for it either, so the tech never saw it and never did it. The seal more or less covered the line, but moisture and dirt and everything else got in there and eventually broke down the edge of the clear coat.
We ate that. About five hundred dollars in shop costs.
We should have put it on the estimate. It got missed. The tech should have caught it too, but he was busy and it wasn't on the paperwork so it didn't happen. It's .8 for the two seals. With that carrier it was fifty two dollars.
Fifty two dollar operation. Cost us five hundred.
The little things
Most of what we do to repair a vehicle gets paid for. It's the little things that don't get paid for, or don't get done, that cost us the most.
Your tech pulls a mirror because he can't get the belt molding off otherwise. He pulls the trim panel because he can't get to the mirror without it. Nobody's deciding to do that, the car decides it.
Head air bags are a bigger version of the same thing. Your tech has to pull those because we're putting the hot stick on the roof, and you're running electricity through an adjacent panel. That's not a preference. That's not a maybe. That's a we should do this to protect ourselves and the customer.
Repairs require a lot of operations on adjacent panels that we just don't think about. And because we don't think about it, or because we don't put it on there, or because we don’t fight for it, we don't get paid for it.
Those are choices.
Then sometimes you get the other version, which is what happened to us on that roof rail. We forgot it. It never got on the paperwork. We didn't fight for it. It never went to the technician, so he never did it.
That one doesn't cost you the labor. But it does cost you.
Run the numbers on it
We should be getting paid to do all of the operations necessary for whatever repair has been elected. So the question becomes how much you're eating.
Take the door seals. Two of them, fifty two dollars. At a hundred cars that's fifty two hundred dollars for something you're probably going to do anyway. And that's just a door seal.
Now take the belt molding. You've got to pull the trim panel, you've got to pull the mirror, and then you can get the molding off to remove it or replace it. Mirror R&I is .4 to .6. Trim panel is .4 to .8. Call it 1.4 hours all in, and that's one door. Multiply that by a hundred cars and you're pushing ten thousand dollars. On one door.
Head air bags are bigger again. R&I on those is 1.6 to 2.0, and then you've got the SRS diagnostic behind it, which is .5 of mechanical time at the mechanical rate. The body side alone is past ten thousand across a hundred cars, and then the mechanical time stacks on top of it.
It gets exponentially worse from there
But I'll say the fair version of this too. It's not in the best interest of any company to spend more money than it must. That's true of a carrier and it's true of you. But it's also not in your best interest to spend money repainting something because an operation didn't get done correctly.
It gets decided at the car or it doesn't get decided
An access question is easy to answer at the car. You're standing in front of the component. Does this come off. Is this clip going to break. What do I need to pull to get to this.
And if you're not sure, ask the technician. He's the one who has to get it off.
Then write it down, because four hours later at the desk you're working off photos and your memory, trying desperately to recall what operations you needed so the repair gets done right. At that point you're not answering a question about the car anymore. You're answering a question about what you remember about the car.
Best fix I know is just writing it down somewhere.
- Notes in your estimating system
- A scope sheet
- The piece of paper you're already writing your repair, replace, and R&I operations on
Doesn't matter which one. It matters that it's not in your head.
It comes in chains
People tend to think of R&I as a list of parts to pull and that's not really how they behave. They come in chains. One thing needs an access step, that step needs another access step, and you're three or four deep before you've even gotten to the damage.
I use the belt molding for this because it's simple. I need to remove or replace a belt molding. The mirror overlaps it, so the mirror comes off. To get the mirror off I've got to pull the trim panel. Pulling the trim panel might break clips, and some of those are single use.
Then there's the roof rail, which is the one from the top of this.
That chain starts with refinishing the rail. Honestly, the right way to do it is taking the doors off and taking the seals off. That's not always feasible and it's not always something a carrier is willing to pay for, but at the very least you need the seals moved out of the way.
I was always taught drop seals, that gives you enough clear coat coverage. If you've ever been in a booth you know that's not true. Trust me when I say I've redone that repair more than a few times.
More shops are getting savvy about this, about doing it in a way you can actually warranty and stand behind so you're not getting rechecks later. If you can't get paid to take the doors off, next best thing is getting paid to open the doors and bag the interior. That way you get clear coverage under the door seal where the sun and water and dirt aren't going to get in there and break it down.
Weather strip is the minimum. Doors open at the very least, when you can get it.
When you're not sure, research it
Different databases and guides list operations differently, so your mileage may vary here.
Some access is built into the operation you're already doing and some of it isn't. I'm in CCC One more often than not, so I'm working off the Motor database. Rough rule; there is the published operation tells you what is and isn't included. You can also check the H notes in CCC, bottom left of the screen or click the button, and it'll tell you sometimes.
If you honestly can't tell, and you can't find it in Motor or in the Mitchell guide, put the line on there. Be ready to explain it but put it on there. It should be justifiable if it's something you actually have to do to complete the repair.
Be mindful of what the guide tells you, though, because it isn't always what people assume.
Motor says seam sealer is included in replacing a roof. The labor is included. The material is not. It's not in the labor hours, so you should be charging for it, and a lot of people don't. I was never told to. I had to do the research to figure that out myself. At eighty five dollars for a kit that adds up, and then you get into panel bond and NVH foam and now you're more than two hundred deep on one vehicle.
Mileage varies on all of that. You should always be looking at factory repair procedures to know exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Some third party resources are okay. If you can get factory, factory is king.
Small parts, and shoot it while you can see it
Clips break. We all know that. A lot of fasteners are single use and your estimating guide may not tell you. It also doesn't tell you about weather strips tearing, or weather strips with adhesive every time.
The clips are what, a couple dollars, few dollars. Real small, piddly stuff. Why bother?
You bother because recoverables cost you money and you should be getting paid for them. The difference between a profitable car and an unprofitable car is very small things, continually. Good habits. Doing the research.
Which I know is a pain when it gets busy. You've got five customers wanting estimates, you've got carriers calling, you've got Copart coming to pick up cars. I get it.
But even at a hundred cars, catching all those small things that normally get missed is what takes you from needing a hundred cars to be profitable and keep everybody paid, down to ninety eight. Or ninety five. Or ninety.
Other side of this is when something does break, take a picture of it right then. Because a week or two later, when the car's back together and down the road, all you've got is an invoice for the thing you had to replace. Not every carrier is going to just take the invoice.
Again, good habits.
Send one vehicle. I write it inside your CCC ONE or Mitchell account, under your shop name, every operation line noted, and I defend it with the appraiser.
You've got a lot of R&I on here
There was one appraiser I worked with fairly often at a shop I was at years ago. He told one of my coworkers I'm click happy.
I don't hear it often. But I do still hear it sometimes.
I want all of the operations on there. All the single use clips, the adhesive moldings that aren't going back on. And beyond just having them on there, I know why they're there. I can articulate to an appraiser why I need what I need. Additionally if the r&I is on there, and it breaks, no one is going to say it wasn’t approved. Now I get compensated for the replacement.
I didn't have that when I was new. I didn't have a lot of it until I'd been in this industry a while. We should always be learning new things, and those new things don't just make us better at the work, they make the business more successful.
Three things that make it easier for me:
Sequence it. Access in the order it physically happens, after the operation that needs it. If I'm repairing a door and I need to paint the door, I put the door repair down and then I start adding access. Belt moldings, mirror, door handle, lower molding if it has one. If it's a unique situation, note it.
Note it. A single line on the line item explaining why you need what you need will keep the appraiser from questioning it at all. Sometimes they honestly don't know what you're doing or why. Sometimes they need the justification for whoever's reviewing their file. That one sentence saves a thirty to forty five second conversation, or longer, and when you're busy that matters.
Document everything. When I'm at the car I document all the damage in photos and I write it down. Then I go back to my office and there are fifteen other things waiting on me, and some of them are hot fires I have to deal with right now, and I come back to that estimate two or three hours later. That makes it harder. Harder to remember why. So document it, write it down, take the photo.
Frequently asked questions
What is R&I on an auto repair estimate?
R&I stands for remove and install. It is a labor operation where a component is taken off the vehicle and reinstalled, either to access damage underneath it or to allow another operation to be performed correctly. R&I is labor only, with no replacement part, though broken fasteners and single use clips found during removal are separate items. R&R, remove and replace, means the original part is discarded and the estimate carries both labor and a part.
How much is a missed R&I operation worth?
Individually, very little, which is why they get skipped. Dropping two door seals runs about .8 hours. Accessing a belt molding means a mirror R&I of roughly .4 to .6 and an interior trim panel of roughly .4 to .8, so about 1.4 hours on a single door. Head air bag removal for heater work runs 1.6 to 2.0 hours plus SRS diagnostic time at the mechanical rate. The significance is cumulative. A fifty dollar operation missed across a hundred vehicles is five thousand dollars.
Does a hail matrix include R&I?
No. A hail matrix contains dent counts and corresponding dollar amounts. It does not include removal and installation operations of any kind. Access required to reach hail damage must be written as separate line items.
Is seam sealer included when replacing a roof?
In the Motor database the labor to apply seam sealer is included in the roof replacement operation. The material is not included and should be charged separately. Panel bond and NVH foam are handled similarly, and materials on a single vehicle can exceed two hundred dollars. Requirements vary by database and by vehicle, and factory repair procedures are the authoritative source.
Do head air bags have to be removed for hail repair?
When an inversion heater is used on a roof, head air bags come out of the work area before that work begins, because electrical current is being run through an adjacent panel. This is a safety requirement rather than a preference. The removal and reinstallation is a labor operation, and SRS diagnostic time afterward bills at the mechanical rate rather than the body rate.
What happens if access operations are left off an estimate?
One of two things. The technician performs the work anyway and the facility absorbs the cost, or the technician never sees the operation on the paperwork and it does not get done, which can compromise the repair in ways that take months to appear. Refinish coverage under a door weather strip is a common example, where the failure shows up as clear coat lifting well after delivery.
How do you know whether an operation is already included?
Check the published operation in the database you are working in, and in CCC One check the H notes for inclusions and exclusions. When the guides do not settle it, write the line and be prepared to explain why the operation is required to complete the repair. Factory repair procedures are the most authoritative source available.
About the author
Chris Johnson is the founder of Storm Rider Solutions. He has worked in collision repair since 2008 as a service writer, estimator, production manager, assistant manager, director of estimatics, and director of hail and collision operations for multi million dollar operations, and has specialized in hail estimating since 2021. He is a United States Marine Corps veteran.
About Storm Rider Solutions
Storm Rider Solutions writes remote hail and collision estimates and supplements for PDR and collision shops, inside your CCC ONE or Mitchell account, under your shop name. Every operation is line noted, and I defend the file with the appraiser on your behalf. It is overflow support for shops whose estimators are buried, not a replacement for them.
This article describes general industry practice and the author's own observations. Labor times, inclusions, and material requirements vary by database, carrier, and vehicle. Factory repair procedures are the authoritative source. It is not legal advice.