Body Shop Material costs

[John Moore]

I have been watching our Body Shop material costs soar, and have done some calculating.....combining the cost of paint & materials with the expenses allocated to other supplies, and dividing this total by our repair order count, our total expense per R/O is $159.26. Does this seem in line?

[Douglas George]

That number seems high to me unless you are including paint as a supply. At one of our Bodyshops, we figured out how much we used in materials, then we took that number and told the techs they would have to buy their own materials from our parts department. We pay the techs 70% of what we used to spend and we kept 30%. This was an immediate reduction of 30% and has worked fairly well. New body techs have to be advanced some materials for the first month. But they rapidly figure out how to conserve.