MIKE BEIER

The office wasn’t much—more closet than workspace—but in 2008, it was enough to convince Mike Beier to take a chance on CARSTAR. What began as an unlikely starting point has since shaped nearly two decades of his career in collision repair. “I didn’t get into it on purpose. I didn’t seek it out,” he said. “I graduated in the spring of 2008 in Hamilton, and I just so happened to have a job interview at CARSTAR, which was actually to be a data analyst. Then they said, oh, we’ll call you. And then they called me that night and said, can you come in tomorrow? We want to interview you for another job that we have, which was procurement specialist.”

Though he liked cars, Mike knew little about collision repair. “Even coming out of business school, what they taught at university was not real world stuff,” he said. “So I drank from the fire hose really quickly there, and had the opportunity to learn from, I think, two of the pioneers of the space, Sam and Larry, and the rest of the team at CARSTAR at the time.” After leaving CARSTAR, another opportunity presented itself.

“When I got let go from CARSTAR, they were calling me a couple weeks later saying, hey, we want to chat,” Mike recalls of the call that led him to Consolidated Dealers Co-Operative and, eventually, Consolidated Collision Services (CCS). “I wasn’t really sure if what they were proposing was going to work—it was a startup, and the odds were sort of 50/50 at best. But I thought, hey, what a heck of an experience to get in the meantime, and if it does work out, it’ll be pretty cool.”

Building CCS became a defining chapter over the next 12 years alongside Tom Langton and Sandy Liguori. “It was a lot of hard work in the early days,” he said. “But to build the team that we built at CCS, and then to be able to step away and leave it and then see it performing on its own without me—it’s incredible.”

One milestone stands out: “CCS getting to 100 locations, even though I wasn’t at the helm at that time. I had just handed it off, but I thought, hey, that was a huge milestone,” he said. “I remember getting our first insurance contract. That was the proof of concept of everything. It was like, okay, you can build a network, and you can help shops perform. But can you get the attention of an insurer and get a contract? Because that’s really a legitimizer.”

Mike was 21 when he started at CARSTAR. “I was fresh and had no preconceived notions of anything,” he said. “And I think that was kind of the model that they had. They brought in a lot of people like that and trained them. You can look around the industry today and you’// see a lot of people that went through CARSTAR at the time, they’re all over the place, I think a lot of us owe a debt of gratitude for giving us a start in the business.”

As for staying ahead in a fast-moving, tech-driven industry, Mike focuses on listening. “It’s not really my job to know everything. But talk to your team and talk to your departments. Talk to customers, because their questions and concerns are usually common, and you can tell what’s a theme across the industry,” he said.

Mike’s impact has been recognized by his peers. Nominator Tom Langton of Consolidated Dealers Co-operative highlighted his role in growing Consolidated Collision Services into a national network and noted his recent promotion to President and CEO of Consolidated Dealers as of January 1, 2025. A third-generation automotive professional with 17 years of industry experience, Mike has also served as host of CCS University, a member of the Canadian Collision Industry Forum Steering Committee (2023–2024), and a contributor to Centennial College’s Auto Body Program Advisory Committee.

“It’s not really my job to know everything. But talk to your team and talk to your departments. Talk to customers, because their questions are usually sort of common, and you can tell what’s a theme across the industry.” - NOMINATED BY TOM LANGTON, CONSOLIDATED DEALERS CO-OPERATIVE