Enterprise Rent-A-Car announced that the national average length of replacement rental (LOR) decreased in the first quarter 2015 for the first time in two years. Showing a slight 0.1-day decrease from 2013 to 11.5 days, the quarterly data gathered by Enterprise’s Automated Rental Management System (ARMS) tracks the length of time a replacement vehicle is rented to collision center customers and is considered a proxy for vehicle repair time.
“A variety of factors likely drove the slight decrease in LOR, including more mild Midwest weather conditions despite record snowfalls in the Northeast,” said Frank LaViola, assistant vice president of collision industry relations, Enterprise Rent-A-Car. “The type and complexity of vehicles paired with existing vehicle repair methods also play a continued role in repair time fluctuations.”
Regional variances contributed to an overall LOR of 11.5 days in the first quarter, with the Midwest experiencing the largest decrease nationwide at 0.6 days from the same time last year.
ARMS data also showed that the type of vehicle – domestic or international – also made a significant difference in LOR. Vehicles designated as European took the longest by more than one day, with domestic and foreign models taking close to the same amount of time to repair:
Length of Rental by Vehicle Type: January-March 2015
- Domestic: 11.03 average billed days
- European: 12.45 average billed days
- Foreign: 10.89 average billed days
Enterprise began sharing length of rental information – at no cost – with collision repair centers six years ago in an effort to highlight below-market average cycle times and provide critical performance data for consistent industry-wide comparisons. Today, Enterprise states that these LOR metrics have gained traction with insurers and repairers as a means to track and improve cycle time.
A newly released I-CAR white paper details Q1 Enterprise Rent-A-Car LOR data on Gold Class shops. The data shows that in many areas, such as vehicle repair time, Gold Class shops with well-trained technicians outperformed others in the collision industry.
