Editor's Note: This is the fifth in a FenderBender-exclusive series, excerpted from Ledoux’s book, YesterWreck: The History of the Collision Repair Industry in America, available here.
Find the rest of the series here.
The stock market crash of Oct. 1929 ushered in the biggest financial calamity of all time, the Great Depression, resulting in widespread unemployment and poverty in the U.S. and around the world. At the beginning of the 1930s, over 15 million people, or roughly 25 percent of America’s workforce, were idle. In the days before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, many people were left with only the clothes on their backs. In the auto industry, new vehicle production was cut in half from 5.3 million units in 1929 to just under 2.4 million in 1930. By the end of 1931, this number was cut in half again. But things weren’t all bad. Despite the sharp decrease in new car production, advances were still made in vehicle technology and safety features including safety glass, windshield washers, and sealed beam headlamps. All were meant to either help mitigate auto accidents or protect vehicle occupants in the event of a crash.
The Collision Repair Industry Begins to Emerge
In the early 1930s, collision shops, as an industry, started to coalesce. One of the earliest collision trade magazines, Auto Body Trimmer and Painter magazine emerged. By 1939, the Auto Body Rebuilders Association of New Jersey, one of the earliest associations of its kind, was founded. Auto paint manufacturers begin paint distribution through what traditionally had been auto parts jobbers. Towers Motor Parts was one of the earliest auto parts jobbers in the country to also carry paint and body equipment starting at their store in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1932 and carrying on to its Nashua, New Hampshire, store in 1933. Eventually, the industry grew to a point where carrying only paint and body shop supplies became a financially viable business. By the early 1940s, paint, body, and equipment (PBE) jobbers began to emerge.
Paint Technology Advances
Paint and paint application technology was also advancing. It was during this period that DeVilbiss introduced the model MBC spray gun featuring an entire spray head assembly that can be removed from the gun body with one bolt. The high-volume, low-pressure spray gun was also invented – but it would be 60 years before it came into general use in the automotive refinishing industry. And the paint that was going into those guns was changing. The 1930s saw the introduction of alkyd enamel, best known as DuPont’s Dulux and an acrylic lacquer, DuPont’s Lucite. Sikkens introduced AutoFlex paint.
The earliest paint booths began to show up in the mid-1930s, consisting of three prefabricated walls, an open front, and a fan on the back to suck out fumes and overspray. In front of the fan was a crude filter made of burlap or some other fabric. This was the best painters had to date, but the system had a couple of problems; the burlap material clogged very quickly so filters had to be changed several times a day and – the filters were not fire-retardant. To make matters worse, the paint booth was usually a wooden structure. A build-up of paint and solvent on the cloth, coupled with a wooden booth led to several fires where the paint booth and the shop burned to the ground. A better solution had to be found.
Insurance Companies Wake Up to Severity
In his annual companywide address of 1934, State Farm Insurance founder George Mecherle declared, “Automobiles are changing. They employ new materials and different construction methods. They can attain higher speeds… all of which contribute to higher severity and higher claims costs.”
Despite a deepening recession, State Farm Insurance continued to grow, but certainly not at the rate it once had. In the first seven years of its existence, State Farm had sold over 280,000 auto policies. In the previous six years, it had only sold 103,000 policies. This bothered Mecherle, but not as much as something else – rising loss costs. Since the inception of the company, Mecherle and his financial people had concentrated on sales dollars and the number of policies sold. It was sell… sell… sell… as long as policies are being sold, nothing else mattered… until it mattered. Now, in the economic turndown and the overall lack of policies sold, they looked, for the first time, at loss costs. In speaking to employees at the State Farm annual meeting, Mecherle pointed out that cars were changing – using different technology, which led to a higher severity. (Sound familiar?) He noted that new and different construction made repairs more expensive. The price of parts was increasing, along with labor costs.
Mecherle believed that shops were no longer interested in “bidding” for a job. In fact, he went so far as to say that there was collusion amongst shops to keep repair prices high. Company executives met to decide what to do about the situation. Their answer was to do a state-by-state analysis of each of their policyholders, noting premiums paid versus claims made and losses paid. What they discovered was certain geographical areas had an inordinate number of losses. It was decided that State Farm would no longer sell insurance in those areas. They also found a few agents selling insurance to people who were known to be bad risks. These agents were eliminated and insurance policies for high-risk policyholders were canceled. Hereafter, company executives kept a close watch on losses. Others would follow suit.
Alfred Dunk – Unsung Hero and “Godfather of Spare Parts”
Today, virtually no one remembers Alfred Dunk. But he was a pioneer in the replacement auto parts field, and singlehandedly responsible for helping to keep probably tens of thousands of cars on the road that otherwise would have been scrapped. No doubt, many mechanics and body men praised him for his simple but visionary idea. During the earliest years of the automotive industry, scores of car companies were founded, lasted a few years, sold a few cars, then went bankrupt or otherwise disappeared. This left thousands of “orphaned” vehicle owners with no way to get parts for repair and maintenance.
Enter Alfred Dunk. In 1908, he was approached by two car manufacturers to set up a parts distribution system for them. The two companies would merge into a company called E-M-F and Dunk would handle parts distribution. Dunk then founded a company called Auto Parts Company and made himself president. By 1910, Dunk was doing such a good job that another carmaker, Blomstrom, asked Dunk to distribute parts for them, which he did. Over time, and as more and more car manufacturers went out of business, Dunk found it advantageous to not only buy the manufacturer’s parts inventory but also the blueprints and drawings so additional parts could be made. Dunk then formed another company called The Puritan Machine Company and began to manufacture those parts that he ran out of. A magazine article of the time touted that Dunk had parts or could make parts for 196 obsolete automobiles. In 1929, Dunk turned over to the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce records for parts for 756 companies.
Dunk died of pneumonia in California on March 6, 1936 at age 61 and became known as The Godfather of the early auto replacement parts business. Certainly, many early auto repairers and early body-men knew and depended on his parts companies. Consider also that this pioneer of the auto parts business was born in 1875, the height of the cattle-drive era of the old west.
Duke Norman – Unsung Hero and “Time Engineer”
Most people reading this book probably never heard of Duke Norman, but will likely use or benefit every day from the product he helped create. You might call him a “time engineer.” In 1938, Duke Norman began his career in the body shop at Robertson Buick in Chicago. He knew little about the business at the time, but he became a fast study.
At that time, the only reference for repair times were factory bulletins – times based on removing and replacing undamaged parts on undamaged cars – an operation performed with considerably more effort when the car was damaged. Shop managers were making estimates based on common sense, and their own experience. When the insurance adjuster came in to review the car, the shop managers and estimator would sit down, and both negotiate, in good faith, what was required to properly repair the car.
Norman quickly saw that there was a need for some standardized times. Others in the industry had the same idea – but Norman did something about it. He began keeping track of the time it took to do a particular operation. He also noted that some technicians took more or less time to do the same operation. After documenting the same operation 10 times, he calculated what the average time was to do that particular operation.
At that time there were “a few” companies who began publishing repair data. National was one such company. Periodically, someone from National would stop by the shop, take Norman to lunch, and pick his brain about what he was doing… and how he was doing it. Eventually, in 1950, National offered him a job and thus, Duke Norman, body man became Duke Norman, editor.
But coming up with proper times was not enough. Duke Norman had an idea that the books he produced needed exploded drawings. National didn’t want to change – and Norman felt frustrated. Then he met Glen Mitchell. Mitchell had a competing product, liked what Norman was doing – and hired him.
In January 1958, Duke Norman went to work for what would become Mitchell International. The Mitchell estimating books at that time were sold regionally and Glen Mitchell wanted to go national. Norman’s job was to build a sales force and figure out how to put illustrations in the manuals.
With the proliferation of cars models in the late ‘50s and the need for more and better data, Norman’s former employer could not keep up and was ready to fold. Mitchell stepped in, picking up the National subscribers – and Mitchell was off and running as a nationwide collision industry provider of repair information.
To make sure the times Mitchell was using was fair and equitable for all parties, Norman organized meetings all over the country of shop owners, technicians, dealer associations and insurance companies, for the purpose of reviewing repair times and operations. These meetings continued from 1963 to 1968.
By the mid-1960s, the team of Duke Norman and Glen Mitchell had grown to 130 people. In 1972, the company was sold to Cordura, a technology-based company, with the intention of bringing Mitchell into the 20th century with new technology.
In 1973, Norman suffered a stroke. The travel and long hours had caught up to him. He returned to work later that year and retired in 1976.
Excerpted from Ledoux’s book, YesterWreck: The History of the Collision Repair Industry in America, available here.
