April 4, 2018—ProCare Automotive and Collision, which has 17 facilities in Texas, is still required to use PartsTrader, says Clay Fallis, director of acquisitions for ProCare, meaning there are MSOs outside Caliber Collision that are still obligated to use the parts company.
Last month, there were talks that State Farm was no longer requiring Caliber Collision to use PartsTrader. CRASH Network cited unnamed sources in a report and said that State Farm is no longer demanding Caliber Collision use PartsTrader as a condition of its Select Service network.
State Farm said in an email that it considered its relationships with repair facilities to be confidential and provided no comment. Caliber Collision and PartsTrader both had no comment.
Back in 2013, PartsTrader gained positive and negative feedback from shop owners. Dan Hunsaker, owner of Dan’s Paint & Body in Tucson, Arizona, said the program cost the business about $50,000- hiring a new front-office person just to handle the process that takes about half a day.
When it first launched, other shop owners like John Morris, chief operations officer of Hansen Collision in Grand Rapids, Michigan, claimed benefits like being able to search aftermarket, reconditioned and OEM parts all at once.
“If you’re not using PartsTrader, then you’re probably buying parts for more than you should buy them for,” Fallis says.
Fallis says not much negotiating goes into dealing with State Farm and the PartsTraders contracts. He says his partners in the business have done negotiations based on performance of the shop.
“If you have good numbers with State Farm then they don’t really mess with you,” he says.
