Job Spotlight: Brett Leatherwood Owner of Brett Leatherwood Collision Center

Brett Leatherwood wouldn't wish misfortune on anyone. But he knows when a heavy rain or a hailstorm moves through the area, or the cool autumn air rousts deer out of the woods, life can quickly get much busier for him.

That's because the Phenix City native and resident is among the local shop owners standing by to repair damage to cars and trucks that encounter other vehicles, pieces of ice or a large animals on the move.

"We've got deer season coming up, and hunters will be in the woods and that certainly keeps deer moving and they cross highways more," said the owner of Brett Leatherwood Collision Center on Crawford Road in Phenix City.

"With the cool weather they get to moving more and they go into rut, so the bucks are chasing the does all over the place," he said. "You see a lot more of them on the side of the road and a lot of people hit 'em."

Leatherwood, 31, projects he'll get a couple of deer accidents per week this fall and winter. Nationwide, deer collisions will generate damage to about 1.5 million vehicles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The cost in such an accident is about $2,800, although it can leap to $10,000 if someone is injured, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Whatever damage comes his way, Leatherwood is prepared to take care of it, with his roots connected to the family-owned Leatherwood & Son body shop, which has been operating 40 years. He worked there part-time while going through high school and college, then full-time for nearly a decade before opening his own center.

The Ledger-Enquirer visited with him recently to discuss his job, what it takes to put a broken vehicle back in top condition, and what it's like to deal with insurance companies. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity.

What type of experience did you gain from your family business?

I got a lot of experience with them, not so much on the administrative side of it. Mostly I worked in the shop as a painter and a body man for all of those years. So I was really hands-on at that point, and I still am a lot to an extent. I knew some of the ins and outs of the office stuff, writing estimates and administrative and clerical stuff.

What was your typical day like working with your family collision center?

Being in the paint shop side of it most of the time ... once the cars leave the body shop and come over to the paint shop, a lot of times we would have to prime spots that were repaired, and then sand them off. Once you get it sanded and everything slicked out and feeling real good, then you tape the car up, paint it, untape it. Then if you had any little bit of trash or anything like that that gets in the paint, you have to sand it and buff it out. And that's pretty much the repetition every day. Our goal down there was three or four cars a day painting. So we were constantly working on something. You move from one step to the next on each car. While primer's drying over here, you'll be sanding this car over there, and taping up the next. Just back and forth.

You didn't like body work as much?

It didn't matter to me either way. My dad and my uncle are partners. My dad was the painter, so I always fell in over on that side helping him, and he taught me everything I know.

What's the toughest job you've had to do over there?

Cleaning the toilets when I was young was pretty rough (laughs).

They start you at the bottom?

Oh yeah, start at the bottom and work your way up ... sweeping the floors, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning out the gutters, picking up trash in the yard, whatever it took.

Day to day, is it difficult to take a wrecked vehicle and make it look like new?

It's not terribly difficult. The biggest thing is having experienced guys that can help you and work on the cars, and do the work that needs to be done while you're handling everything else. That's where a lot of my time comes in, calling, checking prices on parts, ordering parts and getting the stuff in, and writing estimates, because that takes a lot of time, too.

The biggest thing is getting good help that knows what they're doing, which isn't cheap, but you get what you pay for ... That's hard nowadays because there's no young guys coming through learning how to do body work.

That sounds like a problem?

Nowadays everybody wants to be a painter. Nobody wants to do the body work, the hard stuff, like heating and pulling frames, and cutting and welding and all of that stuff.

What's the process for getting a vehicle repaired?

First off, we'll write an estimate on the car and then we'll tear it down, because a lot of times you can't see the hidden damage that's on the inside. So we'll write a preliminary estimate. Once we get the car in the shop and take it apart, if we find any additional damage then we can look at it, document it and take pictures of it. If we're working with an insurance company we'll do what we call 'supplements.' We'll call the insurance company up and send them pictures, and say this was damaged, we didn't see it at first, neither did you. Most of the time we're able to work it out that way.

So with repairs it's more about replacing parts than pounding out dents?

On some stuff we do (physical repairs), but most of the time it's replacing. It's probably 60-40 ... 60 percent replacing, 40 percent repairing. A lot of times insurance companies want to replace stuff other than repair it, but sometimes they don't. It just depends on the situation.

How many insurance companies do you deal with?

There's the big ones. But for every big name, there's probably two or three more smaller name insurance companies, fleet policies and stuff like that you don't really hear much about.

Has there ever been a repair job that stumped you, or is everything fixable?

Pretty much everything is fixable, and if they're not, insurance companies total them. There's not anything that's particularly hard. I never got into it a whole lot, but I watched guys straightening a bent frame on a vehicle, putting it on a frame machine and pulling it and measuring it the whole time, and having to get it right back to exactly where it was.

Does that take welding?

They just heat up torches ... there's a frame machine and you wrap chains around (the frame) and you can put 6,000, 8,000, 10,000 pounds of pressure on whichever direction you need to move it to get it back to where it needs to be.

Do you have borderline instances, where it could go either way on a repair or being totaled?

That's based on the value of the car. If you've got a car that's worth $10,000 and the cost of repairs exceeds $7,500 -- which is 75 percent of the value of the car -- then the insurance companies by law have to total that vehicle ... If you're anywhere up to that 75 percent, and if we wrote a preliminary estimate and it's at $7,400, you can just about bet you're going to find something additional that's going to put it over that $7,500 mark. So usually they'll go ahead and total something like that if it's really close on the verge.

Speaking of deer, what damage can they do to a vehicle?

I have totaled out cars with deer hits before if it gets into the radiator and condenser and stuff like that. It's just depending on the value of the car.

Do you see more head-on hits or side shots?

I would say it's about 50-50. We get a lot of deer running into the side of vehicles. When they're trying to cross the road they get spooked and just, bam, run right into the side of them.

As far as accident repairs in general, is smaller damage more prevalent on vehicles you see?

It's a mixture. We have a lot of major accidents, but most of the time I would say it's just the average fender bender, bumping in the parking lots, or somebody putting on the brakes but just not being able to stop soon enough. It's paint and body work, maybe replacing the bumper.

Have you seen anything really unusual?

I've got one right over there, she ran over a tire and wheel coming back from Atlanta. It was laying in the middle of the road and she ran slap over it and almost flipped, but luckily didn't ... We have to replace some suspension parts on it, and take it to the alignment shop and have them do a four-wheel alignment to make sure everything's straight.

When it comes to paint jobs, does weather and temperatures play a factor?

That's an old myth in body shops, that temperature affects that kind of stuff. It used to, but nowadays we have different reducers and hardeners that we use for different temperatures, so it's not a big factor at all.

What's the biggest challenge you face with your job?

I think the toughest thing is the market's kind of saturated in Phenix City, especially with me and my dad, and you've got Gibbons Body Works and you've got Dykes Body Shop and you've got Ben's Body Works. We're all right here in the same little area. And then you've got one or two shops out in Smiths Station, too, so I think market share's the biggest thing. It's pretty easy for us, usually, once we get a customer we're pretty good at retaining them. That's where a lot of our business comes from, repeat customers and referrals. And then we do collision repair for all of the major insurance companies, too.

Anything else about dealing with insurers?

Insurance companies now have what they call DRP, direct repair network shops, where shops go in and sign contracts with an insurance company and you have set rates you can charge and set things you can do, and they keep a finger on you about how you've got to do things and how they want vehicles handled. Getting into that, breaking through to that is pretty tough ... But, really, for us it's actually good to not be part of that.You don't get the amount of work that they send, but you don't have to follow their guidelines so strictly. It's like any other kind of contract. They've got a contract because they're cutting you out of some money. But they guarantee you so much work, so it's kind of like the wholesale effect.

As owner and manager, what do you have to keep track of?

Everything from writing estimates to calling around and finding prices of parts, because a lot of times insurance companies want you to use aftermarket or used parts. So you have to call around and get prices on that, and order all of that stuff. Once (a part) gets in, you check it and make sure it's not damaged or got anything wrong with it. And you just try to keep up with the work flow. You can't just sit one guy on one job and let him finish that job and move it out. A lot of times you've got to be able to delegate tasks like -- get so far with this one, get so far with that one, do this one, drop back on this one. If we're waiting on a part for one car, you need to move them on to another car. It's just shuffling things and jockeying around.

Did you ever think about doing something other than this?

When I got out of college I was really thinking about getting into banking, because that's what my degree is in, finance. Things just didn't work out. I had been in this (body repair) business so long that I had already moved up and was making really good money, even working part-time in college. So when I got out of school and applied for those (bank) jobs, what they wanted to start me out at was what I was making part-time ... $20,000 a year less.

And me and my wife were already engaged. We planned to get married and had already bought a house, and I was living there by myself. So it was one of those things where you're like, you know what, I've got to stick with it. I can't really afford to do anything else.

There's something to be said about working for yourself, but it can be a double-edged sword?

I love it ... but it is a double-edged sword. It's really stressful at times. When things are good, they're good. When they're bad, they're bad. But you've just got to plan for those bad times and be set and ready for them.

This story was originally published October 19, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Job Spotlight: Brett Leatherwood Owner of Brett Leatherwood Collision Center."