For almost twenty years, people in collision repair have said I was too hard on DRP shops.
That I was negative.
That I hated DRP.
That I had changed.
They were wrong about one thing:
I didn’t change. My tone did.
And in this episode, I explain why.
I walk through the timeline I was watching from inside and outside the insurance claims system—from DRP management, network contraction and the 2015 MSO Symposium, to OEM certification, consolidation, COVID, shrinking repairable claim volume and the growing power of national MSOs.
Then we get to where the market is today.
I have personally confirmed with two MSOs that capitation models are already operating with two insurers in selected markets.
So this is no longer a discussion about what might happen.
The models are running.
And independent repairers need to understand what that means.
We break down:
Why DRP was always more than a source of referrals
How MSOs went from a small share of DRP appraisal volume to surpassing independents
Why the claims funnel—not your DRP agreement—was the real asset
Why customers may increasingly be directed to specific DRP locations
Why independent DRP shops may be losing more than claim volume
Why OEM certification alone may not protect independent repair
How decades of DRP economics may have helped train the data for fixed-cost models
Why post-repair inspection and evidence are about to matter more
Why consumers should have a legal right to know what was not done to their vehicle
Why informed repair consent may become one of the most important consumer-protection issues in collision repair
Why Right to Appraisal still matters for consumers who choose outside the network
And what independent shops need to build now if they want a future
This is not an episode about turning the clock backward.
We are not going to unwind consolidation.
We are not going to magically create more repairable claims.
And we are not going to stop large repair organizations from negotiating for volume.
The question now is:
What do we build to protect the consumer—and the independent collision repair market that still has a chance to survive?
Because after the contracts, the networks, the scorecards, the patents, the software and the capitation models—
the car still stands alone.
It was repaired correctly.
Or it wasn’t.
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