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AUTOBODYNEWS.COM
Vol. 8 / Issue 2 / November 2018
One Way Collision Settles In at Brand New Facility in Merrill, WI
Panel Says Struggle to Get Paid for Scans a Subset of Larger Debate About OEM Procedures
by Jeremy Ratliff, Merrill Foto News
by John Yoswick
In the wake of an impressive fourmonth construction schedule beginning in mid-April and concluding in mid-August, on Oct. 3 One Way Collision owners Bob and Jane Dehnel were joined by Merrill Chamber of Commerce ambassadors for an official ribbon-cutting ceremony at their newly finished facility at 2602 E. Main St in Merrill, WI. The new facility is nearly twice the size of One Way’s original facility on East First Street, spanning nearly 12,000 square feet.
Along with increasing efficiency, the new location will allow the Dehnels to double the capacity of their auto collision repair service and expand their auto paint service by adding an additional spray booth. The Dehnels plan to take full advantage of the extra space by adding additional services, including offering truck accessories such as push bars and running boards, and a new drivein estimate bay. Plans include the addition of 3– 4 employees, including an estimator, painter and auto body technician, See One Way Collision, Page 24
Self-Driving Cars Are Coming, But Developers Aren’t Reducing Parking Yet, Survey Finds
spend money preparing for the changes they will bring. That’s the conclusion of a recent survey of real estate professionals, despite the expectation that ride sharing and autonomous vehicles will drive down the need for parking in the decades ahead. Most office developers are still reluctant to foot the extra cost of building garages that A Lincoln MKZ outfitted with self-driving sensors. Despite can be converted to other the inevitability of autonomous cars, developers are still uses or even build smaller not reducing parking spots in the projects they build, a garages, said Andrea Cross, recent survey has found. Credit: Ryan Nakashima,
Self-driving cars may be inevitable, but few office developers want to
by Roger Vincent, Los Angeles Times
Associated Press
See Reducing Parking, Page 27
For Wayne Weikel, the question isn’t whether collision shops should be compensated for the vehicle scans the automakers say are a part of proper repairs. Scanning, Weikel said, is just one aspect of OEM repair procedures that collision repairers should be following and for which insurance companies should pay. “Insurance companies have actuaries designed to price insurance policies. Auto manufacturers have engineers that can tell you how to fix a vehicle correctly. I don’t see how we conflate the two,” said Weikel, senior director of state government affairs for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Shops, he said, shouldn’t be
Wayne Weikel of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said collision repairers should follow OEM procedures—and be paid for doing so
placed in a situation of making the proper repair without proper payment. “That, we think, is wrong,” Weikel said. “The problem here isn’t whether there is a solution. The solution is that we need to use OEM procedures every time. The problem is making sure shops get paid for See Paid for Scans, Page 20
Jittery Days Remain for U.S. Auto Industry, Despite Trade Pact ‘Fight Over’, Ford Cutting Jobs by Bill Koenig, AdvancedManufacturing.org
The U.S. auto industry has seen one major headache go away. However, that doesn’t mean industry jitters have ceased. The Trump administration announced Sept. 30 that Canada will be part of a new trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico. That will, essentially, preserve an automotive supply chain extending across the three countries that formed because of the North American Free Trade Agreement. “Aside from avoiding disaster, there really wasn’t much to gain or lose” in the new agreement, said Kristin Dziczek, a vice president of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR; Ann Arbor, MI) in an e-mail interview. “There will be some movement of supply chains to North American on the margins.” NAFTA will get new “brand-
ing.” It’s now going to be called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. “USMCA. That’ll be the name, I guess, that, 99 percent of the time, we’ll be hearing: USMCA,” President Donald Trump said Oct. 1, according to a White House transcript. “It has a good ring to it.” Of course, Trump isn’t neutral. He criticized NAFTA when he ran for office. “I have long contended that NAFTA was perhaps the worst trade deal ever made,” he said in discussing the new deal. “To me, it’s the most important word in trade because we’ve been treated so unfairly by so many nations all over the world. And we’re changing that.” One Fight Down…
See Jittery Days Remain, Page 26
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