Fewer U.S. dealerships are operating bodyshops, but the average bodyshop repair order climbed to US$1,264 in the first half of 2026, according to new figures from the National Automobile Dealers Association.
Just 31.9% of franchised dealerships had an on-site bodyshop, down from 33.4% a year earlier and 37.2% in the first half of 2020. That is a decline of 5.3 percentage points in six years.
Meanwhile, bodyshop sales per repair order rose 9.9% from US$1,150 in the first half of 2025. The figure was US$749 in the same period of 2020. It has since increased 69%, although those dollar amounts have not been adjusted for inflation.
The higher value per job kept total dealership bodyshop sales nearly flat at US$3.94 billion, compared with US$3.91 billion a year earlier.
Dividing those sales figures by NADA’s reported sales per repair order suggests dealerships handled roughly 3.1 million bodyshop orders in the first half of 2026, down from about 3.4 million a year earlier. That is an estimate based on rounded figures, not a repair-order count published by NADA.
Across all dealership service and parts operations, customer body labour brought in US$2.32 billion and customer body parts brought in US$2.21 billion.
Dealers recorded nearly US$83 billion in total service and parts sales and wrote 136.2 million repair orders during the six-month period. Those repair orders include service work and should not be mistaken for collision repairs.
Service, parts and bodyshops accounted for 13.6% of all dealership sales dollars, up from 13.2% a year earlier, even as total dealership sales slipped from US$645.66 billion to US$640.77 billion.
Patrick Manzi, NADA’s chief economist, said fixed-operations revenue at the average dealership rose 2.2% despite a slight decline in repair-order counts.
“Revenue was up by 2.2% in the fixed operations department, despite a slight decline in repair order counts,” wrote Patrick Manzi, NADA’s chief economist.
