Collision Advice and CRASH Network put out the 2026 Frame and Mechanical Operations report this week. 473 shops, 49 states, surveyed back in April. They asked how often the eight biggest carriers pay for 21 operations that aren't included in the labor premise.
Three of them are total loss charges.
The administrative fee gets paid 75 percent of the time. Only 7 percent of shops have never asked for it.
Clearing a customer's personal data gets paid 37 percent of the time. 62 percent of shops have never asked.
Parts cart storage gets paid 33 percent of the time. 63 percent have never asked.
My read on that, and it's a read, is that this isn't mostly a carrier problem. We don't bill what we should.
The report says something close to it. It notes that whether a shop gets reimbursed depends to a degree on whether it negotiates for the item, and then moves to the next chart. I'd put more weight on that sentence.
What you control and what you don't
You don't decide whether a car totals. The carrier does, and they're working off the age of the vehicle, the policy, the damage, the valuation, and what the salvage bid comes back at.
You can move it some by agreeing to a lesser number than the damage actually calls for. I'd tell you not to do that and I think you already know why. But that's about the extent of your influence on the outcome.
What you do control is what goes on the bill.
The fees and the charges are yours. Whether you ask for them is a decision somebody at your shop is making, and the survey says most of us are deciding not to.
What we actually do on a total
On a hail car you scope it, and if you can see it heading toward a total you go have a conversation about it. With management, with the client, or both. I generally write up to about 55 percent and then we talk, and carriers tend to start evaluating around that same number. That's normal and there's nothing wrong with it.
Plenty of them you don't see coming, though.
Customer brought it in. We did intake photos. We scoped it, and on a hail car that means getting it somewhere with light and counting every panel, which isn't a fifteen minute job. We wrote it. We photographed the damage. Depending on the carrier and the vehicle we may have gotten into it.
Then it sits waiting on approval, or waiting on an inspection. Normal pipeline stuff. As far as anybody at the shop knows it's a repair.
A week or two into that is when you find out it's a total.
- Intake photos
- Scope under light
- Write
- Photograph damage
- Possible teardown
- Waiting on approval or inspection
- Found out it's a total
- Car leaves
So now what? You've already done all of it. The car's leaving.
You charge for the things you actually did, as long as they're correct. That's the whole answer.
For most of us that's an admin fee and nothing else. Which is better than nothing, and 75 percent of the time it gets paid.
The two nobody asks for
Clearing personal data is labor to wipe the customer's information out of the vehicle. Home address in the navigation. Contacts synced off their phone. Garage door code in the HomeLink. Mike Anderson's point in the report is that this is something we should be thinking about for our customers, and that the procedure is usually right there in the owner's manual.
62 percent of shops have never put it on a bill.
Parts cart storage is the floor space a cart of parts takes up after you've pulled them off a car that then gets declared a total. Anderson writes that the space needed for proper parts storage has gone up roughly tenfold in the past decade. Average claim carried 13 parts in 2025, three or four more than it was ten years ago, and the parts are bigger than they used to be.
63 percent have never asked.
Run the numbers on it
Say between those two charges you'd bill a hundred dollars on a total. Use your own number, I'm picking one to do the math with.
About 23 percent of claims ended in a total loss in 2025. Say you run 400 cars a year. That's somewhere around 92 totals, and a hundred dollars apiece is $9,200.
You won't collect $9,200, because those two charges only get paid about a third of the time. So call it $3,000.
Three grand on its own isn't much. But right now a lot of shops are collecting zero of it on work they already performed, and the difference between zero and three thousand is putting a line on a bill.
That's two charges out of 21 the report tracks.
The part I'd read twice
Anderson flags something I'd pay attention to.
79 percent of shops now bill total loss processing as an itemized list instead of a flat fee, and the flat fee share has been coming down since it peaked around 28 percent in 2022. More shops are breaking out estimate fees, storage, parts cart storage, disassembly, OEM research.
Some carriers are pushing back on that, and on storage. Per the report, in some cases they've used collection agencies to go after shops after the fact to recoup amounts that were already paid.
His advice is to have an attorney look at your authorization forms. That seems reasonable to me. The paperwork a customer signs at intake is what's supposed to carry you through a conversation like that, and a lot of us treat it as a formality.
We sent a storage bill on a hail file last year that was two months in with no movement from the carrier. Never heard back on it. That's a different failure than getting billed back after the fact but it lands in the same place, which is whatever your authorization form actually says.
Four questions
The report has four questions Anderson uses on any line item and they're good enough that I'll just repeat them.
Is it required to return the vehicle to pre-accident condition. Is it included in any other labor operation. Are there pre-determined times. What is it worth.
If you can answer those four you can defend the charge. If you can't, better you find that out before somebody else does.
For backup the report points at the owner's manual for the data clearing procedure on a specific vehicle, and at the P-pages for your estimating system, which sit in the Estimate Toolbox section of the DEG website. There are DEG inquiry results for all three of these charges.
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.
One more thing out of the report
Anderson writes that it'll be interesting to watch how AI affects total loss processing going forward, with systems identifying total loss vehicles earlier in the claim. And he says shops that rely on storage for profitability should be thinking about how they replace that revenue.
I wrote about the front end of this a couple months back. CCC's First Look reads photos at first notice of loss and flags total loss potential before an appraiser has been near the car, and their CEO said on the Q2 call that two top five carriers grew their use of it during the quarter.
Run that out on a hail vehicle. If the total gets called off customer photos in a driveway, the car never comes to you. No intake, no scope, no storage, no admin fee, because there was never a file.
I don't know how fast that happens. My guess is slower than the people selling it think and faster than most shops are planning for, but it's a guess.
What I'd do about it
Ask for the two nobody asks for. That's most of it. 62 and 63 percent of shops never trying also means carriers aren't used to seeing it, so the first handful of those conversations are going to be annoying.
Get somebody who does this for a living to look at your authorization form, especially if you're itemizing and especially if storage is part of how you make money.
And document a total loss file the way you'd document a repair. Photos, notes on the lines, all of it. Six weeks later a total loss charge gets questioned the same way a supplement does.
The current Who Pays for What survey is open through the end of October and covers scanning and calibrations, aluminum repair, and shop supplies. Takes a few minutes, and these numbers only exist because shops fill it out.
Frequently asked questions
What is a total loss administrative fee?
It is a charge covering the time required to produce an estimate, valuation report, or other paperwork on a vehicle declared a total loss. In the 2026 "Who Pays for What?" Frame and Mechanical Operations Report it ranked first of 21 not-included operations, paid always or most of the time at 75%, with only 7% of surveyed shops reporting they had never asked for it.
Can a shop charge for clearing personal data from a total loss vehicle?
Yes, billed as labor. The work covers erasing customer information from the vehicle, which can include navigation history and stored home address, contacts synced from a phone, and garage door opener codes. The 2026 report found 37% of shops that negotiate for it are paid always or most of the time, while 62% have never asked. The procedure for a specific vehicle is generally found in the owner's manual.
What is parts cart storage?
It is a charge for the floor space occupied by carts holding parts removed from a vehicle that is later declared a total loss, billed on a similar basis to vehicle storage. The 2026 report found 33% of shops that negotiate for it are paid always or most of the time, and 63% have never asked.
How often do shops get paid for total loss charges?
It varies by charge. The administrative fee, which only 7% of shops have never requested, is paid 75% of the time. Clearing personal data and parts cart storage, which roughly six in ten shops have never requested, are paid 37% and 33% of the time. The report notes that reimbursement depends in part on whether a shop negotiates for the item.
Can a repair shop influence whether a vehicle is declared a total loss?
Only marginally, and not in a way worth pursuing. The total loss determination belongs to the carrier and is based on vehicle age, policy terms, documented damage, the valuation, and the salvage bid. A shop could write an estimate below what the damage actually requires, but that means performing uncompensated work on a vehicle that should have been settled.
Should total loss processing be billed as a flat fee or itemized?
Both are in use. The 2026 survey found 79% of shops bill an itemized list of charges and 21% use a flat fee, with the flat fee share trending down from a 2022 peak near 28%. Some insurers have pushed back on itemized billing and storage charges, in some cases pursuing recovery after payment, which is why reviewing authorization forms with an attorney is advisable.
Why do hail vehicles become total losses if they still drive?
Hail totals are typically constructive total losses, meaning the vehicle is economically rather than physically destroyed. Repair cost exceeds the applicable threshold even though the vehicle remains fully operable. Thresholds vary by state, by carrier and policy, and by the break-even point after a salvage bid, which on hail vehicles commonly falls somewhere between 50% and 70% of actual cash value.
Where can a shop find documentation to support total loss charges?
The owner's manual covers the data clearing procedure for a specific vehicle. P-pages for each estimating system are available in the Estimate Toolbox section of the Database Enhancement Gateway website, and DEG inquiry results exist for the administrative fee, personal data clearing, and parts cart storage.
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 the author of Every Line on the File: Hail Estimating from the Ground Up (2026), a field guide for new hail estimators. 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.
Survey data from the 2026 "Who Pays for What?" Frame and Mechanical Operations Report, conducted by Collision Advice and CRASH Network, based on 473 shop responses across 49 states.