# Delivery and Logistics Operators Delivery fleets generate high frequency, low severity damage: mirrors, quarter panels, rear doors, dock strikes. The problem is not any single repair, it is keeping enough vans available while a steady stream of them needs small body work, especially through a fourth quarter peak. ## High frequency, low severity, every week A delivery van does dozens of stops a day in residential streets, loading docks and structure car parks, driven by somebody who may be new that month. What that produces is not dramatic collision damage, it is a constant trickle of the same six repairs: mirrors, front corners, rear barn doors or a roll up door, a quarter panel scraped along a bollard, a step and a rear bumper, and a load floor that has been beaten by a dolly. Cab body repair runs $750 to $12,000 and rear barn door service and latch repair runs $300 to $2,500. Roll up and swing door service runs $400 to $4,500. Cargo floor and liner work runs $400 to $4,500. Individually those are small numbers. Across a fleet across a year they are the operating cost that nobody budgeted for and everybody pays. Dock damage is the one with a structural tail. A van reversed into a dock at a slight angle loads a rear frame member and a door frame rather than just the bumper, and a door that no longer seals against its frame is a van taking water into a cargo area. That is the repair worth catching early, because a rear frame member left alone becomes a body mount and then a floor. ## The spare ratio problem Every fleet runs a ratio of spare vehicles to routes, and every fleet has set that ratio too thin at some point. A repair that takes four days instead of two does not cost you four days of one van, it costs you the moment the spare pool runs out and a route goes uncovered. That is the number a body shop is actually being measured against. The lever that works is parts on hand before the vehicle arrives, which is possible whenever the scope is known in advance. On the six repeat repairs above the scope usually is known, and a fleet that calls with a description rather than arriving with a van can have the parts waiting. Where teardown is needed that is not possible, and saying so beats promising a date nobody hits. The second lever is batching. Three vans with minor body damage brought in together, scheduled against each other rather than as three separate arrivals, come back faster in aggregate than three vans brought in whenever somebody noticed. That requires a fleet to tolerate a small amount of deferred cosmetic damage in exchange for shorter total downtime, which is a trade most fleets will take once it is described. ## Documentation when somebody else is paying A large share of delivery fleet damage involves a third party: another vehicle, a property owner, a facility. That means two carriers, two adjusters and a liability determination that has nothing to do with the repair, and it means the paying party has no relationship with you at all. Photographs at intake matter more in that situation, not less. Every repair order here is photographed at intake before anything is touched, at teardown, and again before delivery, with scale in frame on each damaged area. On a third party claim that set is what stops a scope being disputed by somebody who never saw the vehicle and has no reason to take your word for anything. Every authorisation is dated on the repair order, verbal ones included, which is what a fleet office needs for its own accounting. Sixteen carriers are billed direct, and where the paying carrier is one of them the settlement never routes through you. Where it is not, having a dated file is what keeps the invoice from becoming a conversation. ## Electric vans, and what actually changes Electric delivery vans change three things about a body repair and leave the rest alone. High voltage systems mean isolation procedures before any work near a pack or a cable run, and that is a process step rather than a negotiation. Structural members frequently double as pack protection, so a repair that would be cosmetic on a combustion van becomes a structural one. And driver assistance systems are standard rather than optional. The calibration point is the one most often missed on an estimate. A front hit moves radar brackets and camera mounts, and a repair that returns the panel without recalibrating returns a van aimed at where the road used to be. ADAS scan and recalibration runs $275 to $1,800 and the scan report goes in the file. What does not change is the damage pattern. Mirrors, corners, rear doors and load floors, in the same proportion, for the same reasons. Fleet graphics and vinyl wrap runs $1,500 to $8,500 and is worth planning into a repair rather than adding afterwards, because a van with a mismatched wrap panel is a van that looks damaged to every customer it visits. --- Source: https://ocrv.guru/we-work-with/working-fleets/last-mile-operators/ OCRV Center, 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. (949) 799-3387. Serving Laguna Niguel, California. All work performed in shop. No mobile or roadside service. Licences: California Bureau of Automotive Repair ARD00288521; EPA CAL000367879. Published ranges are ranges, not quotes. Every figure traces to https://ocrv.guru/prices/.