Canadian collision repairers have seen repair values continue to fall in July, while production efficiency has also softened after several months of improvement, according to the latest Pulse of the Industry report from Collision Repair magazine and AutoHouse Technologies.
The latest Pulse of the Industry report, produced by Collision Repair magazine in partnership with Vancouver-based AutoHouse Technologies, draws on more than 60,000 repair orders each month from across Canada.
The July results mark an important change in the recent trend.
Through the spring, lower repair values had been accompanied by better production results. Average cycle time — the number of calendar days required to move a vehicle through the repair process — fell from 13.8 days in April to 13.2 days in May and 13.1 days in June.
Average touch time, which measures the number of labour hours performed on a vehicle for each day it remains in the repair process, rose from 2.5 hours in April to 2.6 hours in May and remained at 2.6 hours in June.
Repair inventory also fell sharply. The industry’s work-in-progress ratio — which compares the amount of work currently in production with a shop’s average daily output — declined from 12.7:1 in February to 12.2:1 in March, 11.6:1 in April, 10.6:1 in May and 10.5:1 in June. A ratio of 10.5:1 represents roughly 10.5 days of repair work in production.
Mike Gilliland, president and founder of AutoHouse Technologies, said production efficiency softened in July after several months of improvement.
“Overall production efficiency softened after several months of improvement,” Gilliland said.
At the same time, repair values continued to move lower.
Insurer-paid repair-order values — essentially the average value of collision repairs billed through insurance claims — had already fallen month-over-month in each of the previous three reports: by $100 in April, another $50 in May and another $131 in June. That represents a cumulative $281 decline between March and June.
Gilliland said the July decline extends what has become a sustained three-month trend.
“This is no longer a short term movement, the most recent three months show a sustained downward trend, and the average RO value is also below July 2025,” he said.
Collision Repair publisher Darryl Simmons said the combination of weaker repair values and softer production performance makes the July results more significant than another monthly decline in repair values alone.
“The important change is that shops had been offsetting weaker repair values with better operating performance,” Simmons said. “July is the first indication that those two trends may now be moving in the wrong direction at the same time.”
Gilliland said the continued decline in repair values signals a more competitive repair market.
“The continued erosion in repair value is a trend worth watching and signals a more competitive repair market,” he said.
The repair value trend predates July. In April, average insurer-paid repair-order values fell $100 from March. They declined another $50 in May and $131 in June. By June, the average insured repair was $231 below the previous six-month benchmark.
Simmons said that makes the direction of the next several reports particularly important.
“One month of weaker production performance could be seasonal,” he said. “The repair-value decline is harder to dismiss because it has persisted. The question now is whether July’s efficiency result is a temporary summer movement or the beginning of a second trend.”
Gilliland said the decline in production efficiency may prove seasonal.
“The decline in production efficiency may be seasonal, but it reinforces the need for repairers to stay focused on the fundamentals,” he said.
Pulse of the Industry data is normalized, with unusually large variations screened out to prevent individual jobs from distorting the broader results. Financial figures are reported before tax.
