Toronto, Ontario — As the Canada-U.S. land border re-opens this week, Enterprise Rent-A-Car is expecting that Canadian claims volumes may finally return to pre-pandemic levels.
The company noted in its Q3 Length of Rental report that average billed days for car rentals have remained static at 11.4 days since Q3 of 2020.
The U.S., on the other hand, saw LOR (length of rental) increase by nearly three full days since this time last year.
Enterprise says that they expect to see more familiar numbers as cross-border travel gets back up to speed.
“The repairable claims volume in Q3 2021 still represents a greater than 10 percent decrease over Q3 2019 (pre-COVID). With the impending opening of the US-Canada border, we expect to see volumes increase at a faster pace in Q4 2021 and Q1 2022,” said Ryan Mandell, director of performance consulting at Mitchell International, from whom the data was collected.
As well, Mandell found that trucks and SUVs are taking up a considerably more prominent portion of repairable claims as their market share has increased by more than 2.5 percent since last year.
“Trucks and SUVs (including CUVs) continue to capture more claims market share with 56.85 percent of repairable vehicles in Q3 2021 compared to 54.34 percent in Q3 2020. On average, trucks and SUVs have an ACV (actual cash value) which is $10,422 higher than passenger cars, so as we see more of these vehicles on the road, we can expect higher costs of repair due simply to higher total loss thresholds.”
Enterprise says that whatever is in store for LOR in Q4 remains to be seen, as border restrictions are lifted and supply chain disruptions persist.
