Total Loss Rates Just Hit 22.8%. Here's What That Means for Your Shop.

A Record High That's Costing You Money

Total loss rates just hit 22.8%, a record high. If your repair volume is down and you can't figure out why, this is probably a big part of it.

Here's what's happening. More claims are getting totaled instead of repaired. CCC data shows we're at the highest total loss rate on record. And 72% of those total losses are vehicles 7+ years old, the cars that used to be your bread-and-butter repairs.

For most shops, this doesn't show up as a dramatic cliff. It's gradual. You just notice you're doing 45 repairs a month instead of 50. And you assume it's seasonality, or your DRP relationship, or the shop down the street. But it's bigger than any one shop.

The Math Most Shop Owners Aren't Doing

Quick math: if you're running a shop doing 50 repairs a month at a $4,700 ARO, a 3-point jump in total loss rate means 1-2 jobs a month that never make it to your bay. That's $5,000 to $9,500 in revenue disappearing, not because you did anything wrong, but because the car got written off before you ever got a chance to repair it. Over a year? $60K to $115K off your top line.

Most shop owners don't connect those dots because they're running the shop, not tracking industry data. That's fine. That's what you should be doing. But someone needs to be watching these numbers for you.

What I'd Pull This Week If It Were My Shop

Here's what I'd look at:

1. Your monthly repair count for the last 12 months. If you're down 10-15% year-over-year and you can't point to a specific reason (lost a DRP, moved locations), the total loss trend is probably part of the answer.
2. Your average repair order over the same period. If volume is down but ARO is growing, you're buffering the hit. If ARO is flat while volume drops, you're getting squeezed on both sides.

What Levers Do You Actually Have?

If volume is down and ARO isn't compensating, the question becomes: what can you control? Are you capturing every supplement? Walking every estimate before you start work? Looking at where you can cut overhead in the back office so every job carries more margin?

That's the conversation I have with my clients every month.

I put together a free one-page checklist that walks you through this analysis in about 15 minutes.