Mitchell Parts Price Index Continues to Grow

With parts representing a large amount of the collision industry’s average repairable estimate dollars and parts prices increasing at a faster rate than labor, the influence of parts price on the overall cost of an estimate is significant. Mitchell created the Collision Parts Price Index with data from the company’s estimating database to understand the relationship between prices for the entire market of parts and inflation, which can point to trends in estimate severity, general economic conditions and average claim estimate. The 2014 index saw a typical increase of 3.43 points, with parts rising in price at a slightly higher rate than national inflation rates. Mitchell says that increase is mainly due to overall demand for European and Asian vehicles and could mean more opportunity for shops to repair parts.