Posted by Rich Campfield on March 18, 2013
by Richard Campfield
Predicting
business is a skill every business wishes it had. One issue we face in
predicting business in auto glass is we are in a business that is
greatly affected by weather.Temperature can affect a stone causing a
break when it hits the windshield or just bouncing off and doing
nothing and it is temperature that causes a stone-break to crack-out.
Let’s look at three vehicles for predicting auto glass breakage and
crack-outs: (1) parking lot studies; (2) business records, which I call
the real world; and (3) lab tests, which i will call the crystal ball.
I read a lab test from Europe that was done in 2009 that is making its
way around the industry and the Internet that concluded that 50 percent
of chips crack within a year, 80 within two years, 90 percent within
three years and ten percent never crack. It said that the probability
of a stone-break crack-off was 81 percent when the temperature hit 14
degrees Fahrenheit due to glass contraction. At 23 degrees Fahrenheit
the probability of crack-off was 70 percent. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit
the probability was 59 percent. I would love to show this test to a
potential buyer for a windshield repair kit in order to show the demand
for windshield repair.
Living in Colorado, I also said to myself, “I can’t wait for winter,”
which is the slow season for the auto glass industry, but then I
realistically thought that if that study were true this industry would
be ten times bigger than it is and I would be repairing more floater
cracks than edge cracks and replacing more windshields because of
floater cracks versus edge cracks, when just the opposite is true in
the real world.
For 27 years I have documented windshield damages on my invoices. These
show an outline of a windshield where we draw the damage, measure it,
mark the impact point and name the type of break. I have also
personally done parking lot studies in many states and paid for one in
Denver. The parking lot studies match my business records within five
points. My real-world studies (business records and parking lot
studies) also closely matched ten years of a large insurance company’s
repair and replacement statistics.
In southern California where I operated a repair-only business for ten
years, 97 percent of crack repairs were edge cracks with only 3 percent
floater cracks. A floater crack is a stone-break/chip that cracked
out. An edge crack is a crack that runs to the edge with an impact
point in the weak spot and it cracks immediately upon impact due to
installation stress. The temperature in Southern California was not
severe enough to cause stone-breaks to crack-out but it is warm enough
inland so that impacts cause stone breaks and impacts in the weak spot
would cause an edge crack.
In Colorado, where I have a repair and replacement business, one out of
every three vehicles has a stone break, 17 percent of vehicles have an
edge crack and approximately one out of ten stone-breaks cracks out
into a floater crack.
As you may or may not know glass is more robust when it is cold because
the glass molecules are contracted. When it is hot the molecules
expand and it fractures easier. The same stone impact in the winter
that does nothing would cause a break in the summer.
In the later part of December and the beginning of January this year in
Colorado hit below zero degrees Fahrenheit overnight with daytime
temperatures in the teens and 20s. I anxiously waited for the phone to
start ringing off the hook because if that test were true than
approximately 40,000 of the 150,000 vehicles in the county where I
live would have cracked windshields during this cold spell and among
the 14 auto glass shops in my county we would all be inundated with
business. But it did not happen; the windfall did not arrive.
So I decided to brave the cold and go out and do another parking lot study, and here is what I found.
January 3 and January 4 the overnight temperature was -6 to -8 below 0
degrees Fahrenheit. In the morning of January third while it was still
less than 14 degrees Fahrenheit I went to the Sam’s Club parking lot,
but I had forgotten gloves and after 25 vehicles the pen froze. So on
January 4, I went to the Wal-Mart parking lot and surveyed the
remaining 75 vehicles (had gloves and a pencil this time). Out of 100
vehicles there were 45 chips, five of which had cracked out; ten edge
cracks and; two miscellaneous breaks.
Why do I believe the lab test is not a valid predictor?
Richard Campfield is the president of the National Windshield Repair Association and founder and president of Ultra Bond Inc. in Grand Junction, Colo.
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