Saskatoon, Saskatchewan — CTV News recently reported that a Saskatoon vehicle owner was shocked when he was told that a replacement part for his 2023 Toyota Corolla would not be delivered until 2050. Collision Repair further reached out to the industry to find out about the severity of parts delays in the province.
After being involved in two collisions, Keith Cassidy was told that, while most of the parts were available to fix his vehicle, he was surprised to find out that the delivery of these parts was quoted as arriving in 2049 and 2050, respectively.
“Essentially, what my understanding is, is that we’re waiting on a plastic bumper cover and then another piece of plastic that is a skirt around the rear wheel on the driver’s side of the car,” Cassidy told CTV News.
Cassidy further commented that the wait times are “beyond him.” “How can that take 26 years to manufacture and ship out,” he said.
Toyota Canada further emailed CTV News to state that the 2050 date is populated by default in its system, but that the global supply chain challenges continue to affect the entire automotive industry.
In response to this story, Collision Repair reached out to Chelsea Stebner, Managing Partner, Parr Autobody in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to ask about the current state of parts delays in the industry.
Here, Stebner confirmed that she and the Parr Autobody team have been seeing an increase in parts delays since the Covid-19 pandemic,
Alongside this, Stebner reported that the shop is “also getting lots of back orders with no ETA at all. It’s definitely challenging to keep track and follow up on.”
“We had a Volkswagen that came in as a non-drive in September of 2022 and that had a parts delay that we were able to IOU, thankfully,” said Stebner.
“That part finally arrived in February of 2024. During the pandemic, we also had a non-drive Hyundai with a door shell ‘on a boat somewhere’ on route to us for about five months. Luckily in that case, the customer was not at fault in the collision and the insurance company was covering a rental for the insured.”
“Also luckily,” Stebner concluded, “most customers are understanding, but the reality is that collision shops are the main point of contact for customers, so shops definitely bear the brunt of a customers’ frustrations with parts delays and the entire claims process.”
Collision Repair also recently surveyed the industry to find some basic facts on repairers’ strategies to better understand how different sizes of collision centres across Canada grapple with the ups and downs of parts supply and, inevitably, disruption.
The post Problem Parts: Toyota driver shocked by replacement parts delivery date of 2050; collision repair industry weighs in on automotive parts delays in post-pandemic climate appeared first on Collision Repair Magazine.
