Remote Auto Estimating Services for Collision and Hail Repair Shops

A remote auto estimator writes the repair document for a damaged vehicle without being physically present at the vehicle. The shop supplies photographs, the VIN, measurements or dent counts, and any carrier paperwork.

The estimator then identifies every operation the repair requires, applies the correct labor and refinish times, adds recoverable materials and access operations, notes each line so a reviewing appraiser can follow the reasoning, and delivers the completed estimate or supplement in the shop's estimating platform.

No. This is a service. You send photographs and documentation; a working estimator writes the file in your own CCC ONE or Mitchell. Nothing to install, no seat to license, no tool for your staff to learn.

Shops searching for hail or collision estimating software are usually short of estimator time rather than short of a platform. If that is the case, a service solves it and a second platform does not.

• Shops whose estimators are already at capacity.
• Shops working a hail catastrophe with more vehicles than writers.
• PDR companies that repair well but do not want to write.
• Single-estimator shops losing writing time to production.
• Shops that want a second set of eyes on files before submission.

Yes, and writing under your own CCC ONE login is strongly preferred. The file then belongs to you and matches your existing profiles, rates and carrier agreements. You provide limited user access and the estimate appears as your document, not a third party's.

Mitchell works too. If you write in Mitchell, I write in your Mitchell. If you have CCC ONE, I write in your CCC ONE. Either platform, your login, your document.

If you do not have estimating software at all, I write the file in my own CCC ONE and deliver it complete. That is the fallback, not the default: a file written under your own login is always the stronger option for you.

Anything that documents the vehicle. Common starting points:

• Scope sheets and hail matrices, including handwritten ones.
• Mobile Tech RX estimates to write against or rewrite.
• Mitchell estimates, yours or the carrier's.
• CCC ONE estimates, yours or the carrier's.
• Photographs only, with no estimate written yet.
• A carrier estimate you believe is short, with the denial or short-pay paperwork.

I write from scratch or rewrite what you already have, whichever the file needs. A rewrite is not a lesser job than an initial: most of the money left on a hail file is left there by an estimate that was written too fast, or written in a tool that was never meant to produce the final document.

Both, plus audits. Initial estimates from photographs and shop-supplied documentation. Supplements on files you already wrote or that a carrier issued. Audits where I review your file line by line for missed operations before you submit it.

Yes. Hail and PDR are the core specialty — panel dent counts, conventional repair conversion, roof and glass access, catastrophe volume. Conventional collision estimating and supplements are also written.

Standard turnaround is 24 hours from receipt of complete photographs and documentation. At catastrophe volume it is 24 to 72 hours, and you are told before you send the cars if a week will land on the long end.

Incomplete photo sets are the single most common cause of delay, which is why the required-photo list below is published rather than assumed.

The first file is free — no card, no obligation. After that you buy credits and burn one per file. À la carte is $150; packs bring it down to $140 (10), $132 (25), $125 (50) and $115 (100) per file. Credits never expire, no subscriptions, no monthly minimums. Full pricing below.

Flat per file, never a percentage of the estimate. That is deliberate: an estimator paid a percentage has a financial incentive tied to the size of the number, which is exactly the wrong incentive on a document that has to survive carrier review.

Every vehicle: four corner photographs; a straight-on photograph of every damaged panel; the VIN plate, door jamb label, paint code and odometer (photographed, not transcribed); close photographs of each damaged area with something for scale; any prior damage or prior repair; and photographs of anything you could not open or position.

Hail additionally: dent counts by panel, and a note on your inspection conditions — bay with a PDR light, shop lighting, or outdoors.

Paperwork: the claim or carrier documentation, and any estimate already written on the vehicle.

All fifty states. Remote estimating is not limited by geography, because the work is performed on the documentation rather than at the vehicle.

We are based in Plano, Texas, and work heavily through the hail belt — Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri and Minnesota — but a shop's location has no bearing on whether I can write its files.

Christopher Johnson writes every file personally. Not a contractor bench, not offshore, not software output with a name attached. Consistency is the most common complaint shops have about large outsourced estimating vendors, and one writer is how that problem gets solved rather than managed.

17 years writing estimates. In collision repair since 2008: service writer, estimator, production manager, assistant manager, director of estimatics, and director of hail and collision operations for multi-million-dollar operations. Writing hail specifically since 2021. So far in 2026 he has written $6 million in added value across roughly 430 vehicles for four operations across Texas, Missouri and Arkansas.

Additional writers will be trained as volume grows. He has trained multiple hail estimators before, and no file will go out under a name he has not vouched for.

I defend the file with the appraiser on your behalf. Every operation is line noted when it is written, with the manufacturer procedure or labor premise reasoning stated, so a challenged line already has its support attached before anyone asks.

If a line is genuinely not supportable, I withdraw it rather than argue it. Your credibility on the next twenty files is worth more than one operation on this one.

Vehicle owner information is handled only to the extent the estimate requires it. Access to your estimating platform is limited to the users you authorize and can be revoked at any time. Information is never sold, shared with other shops, or used for marketing.