CIC committees discuss total loss best practices, customer guidance tips
While it’s ultimately up to customers to know their insurance policies, collision repairers said during CIC week that oftentimes, they aren’t familiar with the total loss process, so they may need guidance from shops throughout the process.
A combined presentation by the Collision Industry Conference (CIC)’s Repair Process and Procedures and Estimating and Repair Planning committees focused on the total loss process and its challenges.
One fact that Kye Yeung, president of European Motor Car Works, said is important for shops to do is to make sure their customers know they have the right to question a total loss determination. Yeung is also the co-chair of the Repair Process and Procedures Committee.
Danny Gredinberg
“You [consumer] have the right to investigate to make sure that whatever they’re presenting you is fair, because different regions have different market values,” he said. “If your vehicle has accessories, things that you might’ve added, low mileage — anything unique about it — it might not be a fair comparison. …Sometimes that changes that total loss, if they can prove that vehicle was worth more money, then the car is repairable.”
Danny Gredinberg, co-chair of the Estimating and Repair Planning Committee, noted that even when vehicles are totaled, repairers still need to go through the usual repair planning process with documentation, photos, and itemization of individual steps.
“You want to preserve the details of the vehicle,” he said. “We want to do that process upfront and do the research — accessing the OEM repair information, understanding what it’s going to take to fix that car correctly, to give it a proper damage assessment, so that way you can make a true determination without going with the back and forth… and even predictably think about some of the things like ADAS calibrations and those costs that may be part of that repair scenario.”
Another way shops can assist total loss customers who have a loan on their vehicles is to check if they have gap insurance, Yeung said.
Andrew Batenhorst
“If they owe money on the vehicle and they’re going to be upside down in their next venture… gap insurance basically pays that difference if your vehicle is totaled,” he said. “If you’ve never had a total loss, these are the things that you need to be aware of, and shop owners out there should be given this type of advice. They help your client become whole.”
Andrew Batenhorst, Pacific Collision Center body shop manager, added, “We have to educate the customer on some of these things as they’re not getting that information from their adjuster when the car arrives. And generally, in our technical experience, we could tell in some cases pretty quickly if that car is going to make it or if it’s not. We could start to prepare them… But in many cases, we need to go through the repair planning or disassembly process to start to diagnose and determine the scope of how far we’re going to go with the job.”
Christina Sepulveda, SPARK Underwriters’ director of customer experience and a panelist for the presentation, said once a vehicle is deemed a total loss, liability on the shop is reduced.
“It’s scrap metal with an engine,” she said.
However, Sepulveda added that it’s important for shops to be proactive to prevent further damage and liabilities by getting totaled vehicles out of the facility sooner rather than later.
“Make it a little bit more of an urgent item at times,” she said. “Once it is deemed a total, if you notice it being on your facility for longer than you’re anticipating, make a call and be proactive with it.”
Yeung added that repairers should be mindful of liability for vehicles “from cradle to the grave” because they were the last ones on paper that had them in their possession.
“Let’s say you have an EV that comes in that might have a battery compromised, and we know it’s compromised, that’s why it’s a total loss,” he said. “Some of the OEs have instructions to power down the battery to a certain percentage, or even power down completely. The situation that we have sometimes is that when the car gets picked up by the salvage company, there’s no form that they sign or that we give them to say, ‘We’re done with it.’ How do we notify them that, potentially, this thing could still have a thermal reaction because of the battery’s damage? There’s a void there that’s lacking that we’re concerned about.
“We all, as repairers, need to realize that if we know that there might be a potential problem, we have to notify or put something on that vehicle to indicate that.”
Matthew Pitta, Lucid’s body repair technical team manager and a presentation panelist, answered that, unfortunately, there’s no federally mandated state of charge for transporting an EV.
Matthew Pitta
“For Lucid, we just default to California’s rules, which is 30% or lower,” he said. “We’re going to be releasing some documentation and some special tooling in regards to that to help the shops when they do have a total loss on how to best handle that vehicle before it gets sent to the yard.”
The best option is to always put an EV on a flatbed by itself, he added. Repairers can turn the heater on to drain high-voltage batteries as long as there are no Class 2 diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs) present.
If there are Class 2 DTCs, a Lucid field tech would need to come and remove the battery pack, then use a tool to deenergize the battery. Lucid hopes to eventually provide the tool in tool packs to shops, Pitta said.
From the perspective of salvage companies, Scott Webber, with Copart, said the company typically tries to garner the condition of the vehicle before pickup.
“From pickup, we are looking at how do we safely transport this car, to taking it into the process of inventory, and now ensuring it stays in that condition until either returned back to the owner or the shop, or to the point of sale through our auction,” he said. “It’s individualized based off the state of the vehicle.”
Scott Webber
Webber added that questions Copart will ask shops about the condition of a vehicle include:
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- Is it “run and drive?” (He noted that “run and drive” doesn’t mean road safe. It essentially means, does the engine start and can it move forward or backward?)
- Are any wheels missing?
- Do I need a flatbed?
- Will it tow?
- Is there anything going on with it? (Webber said it’s helpful to let Copart know if they need to bring pallets and/or an extra truck to haul parts that go with the vehicle)
- What’s the ground clearance of the undercarriage?
- Does the vehicle need to be propped up to allow for a more accurate assessment regarding forklift and wheel loader use?
- Are there parts hanging off that need to be secured?
“Shops will tell us there’s a biohazard present, or it’s a fire risk if this thing’s leaking, be careful to turn the ignition,” he said. “We make sure to handle it accordingly.”
Batenhorst cautioned that it may not be obvious when a vehicle first comes to the shop that it’s a total loss, so it’s important to look for stickers on the vehicle or other notifications that might warn of certain damages.
For example, a 2025 Lucid Air was brought to Batenhorst’s shop and didn’t look like a total loss, but his staff noticed a sticker on the windshield. It was immediately put on a lift and discovered that the battery pack had been damaged in five areas by a forklift post-collision.
“We took photos of all that damage and relayed that over to them [Lucid] for further direction to kind of figure out the next steps,” he said. “But in reality, that vehicle did not appear to have been a total loss at the time that it was brought to us, based on the exterior damage that we found. But after the recommendations we got from Lucid, that battery pack now needed to be replaced, and that vehicle ended up actually becoming a total loss because of that.”
Kye Yeung
Yeung added that shops should also document and take photos of how they load parts into or with the car to remove liability from them if the vehicle and/or parts are later damaged.
Batenhorst suggested having the salvage companies sign off on the state of vehicles and their parts at the time of pickup. The form his shop uses also states that the salvage company agrees to the disposal of any parts left behind after three days.
The committees also discussed best practices for when the condition of a vehicle is unknown, which can sometimes mean it’s a theft recovery and/or could contain biohazardous materials or drugs and drug paraphernalia.
Committee members and panelists agreed that, in those cases, proper PPE would be gloves, a respirator, and a biohazard suit. They said that employees should always be encouraged to wear proper PPE regardless of vehicle condition.
Some practices were warned against as well, like sticking hands in seat cushions without knowing if hazardous materials are there.
“When we went through COVID, every vehicle that came in, we had an SOP [standards of procedure] on how we would treat that car, and… a lot of that we still instill when we check in the vehicle,” Yeung said. “That’s how we basically look at a vehicle, regardless of whether it drives in or tows in. It’s just a nice way to make sure that your employees are safe.”
Another important step in the total loss process is erasing personally identifiable information (PII) from vehicles.
Pitta explained that on Lucid vehicles, there is a series of steps to go through on the center display to delete PII. Pitta said Lucid is working on a pass/fail visual checklist for shops to follow for total losses. Once available, shops will be required to upload photos to prove completion of the checklist.
Christina Sepulveda
Webber said if Copart discovers any PII in a vehicle, it’s secured, including on vehicle apps, such as GPS and infotainment systems. They’ll follow OEM steps to reset the vehicle to factory settings, but only if the seller requests it or the process is automatically included in certain contracts.
Sepulveda noted that shops that remove PII reduce their cyber liability risk.
Batenhorst added that, in general, there is a tremendous amount of additional labor to process total losses.
“I think even in the triage process of how those vehicles are directed to come to our facilities, needs a lot of improvement to ensure that the shops are not being put at risk,” he said. “Take a hard look at what your role,what your responsibility is, and are you adding waste to these processes? Are you adding delays and more costs and aggravating the consumer at the end of the day? There’s so many elements to this, that are all even tied up in government regulation as well.”
Images
Featured image: Kye Yeung, Scott Webber, Christina Sepulveda, Matthew Pitta, Andrew Batenhorst, and Danny Gredinberg speak during the July 23, 2025 CIC meeting. (Lurah Lowery/Repairer Driven News)
Slides provided by CIC