Vehicle Miles Driven Improving?

You may have seen statistics recently relating to the increase in miles driven in July 2014 versus July 2013. Seemingly great news for any business in the retail automotive repair industry as miles driven is one of the key drivers that affect the industry and any increase is a positive indicator. As shown on the United States Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration web site[1],

“Travel on all roads and streets changed by 1.5% (4.0 billion vehicle miles) for July 2014 as compared with July 2013.”

Region	Total Travel	Percentage Change
North-East	38.3	0.0
South-Atlantic	55.4	2.4
North-Central	61.1	1.3
South-Gulf	53.4	2.2
West	58.6	1.3

o    Estimated Vehicle-Miles of Travel by Region – July 2014 – (in Billions)

o    Change in Traffic as compared to same month last year.

Great news it would seem. The governmental web site further shows that,

“Cumulative Travel for 2014 changed by 0.6% (10.1 billion vehicle miles).

That sounds like continued improvement and more great news for the industry, but perhaps not…..

In the Thursday, September 18, 2014 edition of the USAToday™ a small graph was shown in the USA SNAPSHOTS® section on the front page with the header “USA’s driving stalled” (click link). According to Advisor Perspectives, the organization that provided the information shown on the graph, miles driven in the United States:

 

 “Adjusted for population growth, January to June miles driven this year are down 8.5% since 2007 peak”

 

Down 8.5%! That certainly isn’t great news for automotive retailers. You can read the article titled “Vehicle Miles Driven: A Structural Change in Our Driving Behavior“, that was written by Doug Short for Advisor Perspectives that was the source of the information on the declining number in its entirety by following this link (click here). The article takes an in-depth look at how miles driven are being affected by gasoline prices, changes in driving behavior, the effects of an aging population, unemployment trends and changes in the ways we interact with one another due to ever changing improvements in communication technologies.

 

Miles driven, along with weather and the economy are the three key drivers[2] for the automotive retail industry. How have these three key drivers been affecting your business? Based on Mr. Short’s perspective on miles driven, automotive retailers will have to rely on improvements in the economy and favorable weather to offset a real decrease in miles driven to help drive growth. You’re going to need to take greater advantage of your push and pull marketing strategy to attract customers.

If you have a desire to continue to grow your business (and who wouldn’t) into the future; it would seem advisable to work hard on ways to differentiate and separate yourself from your competitors. The decline in the miles driven has certainly had an effect on volumes to date and will unquestionably continue to influence the automotive retail industry going forward. With declining miles driven the opportunities for replacing or repairing damaged auto glass, for collision repairs, for tire replacements, oil changes, etc. will also obviously continue to decline. It’s critical for smaller retailers to find new ways to attract customers just as the large market leaders aggressively pursue those same customers with name brand awareness campaigns. Now is not the time for complacency.

 

Just sayin’.

 

Courtesy of TomFishburne.com

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[1] http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/14jultvt/

[2] Just Sayin’ Blog – Winds at Our Backs? – Part II

 

 

 

Just Sayin’ Blog – March Madness (and the AGRR Industry)

It’s my favorite time of year for sports!!

March Madness!!!

The 2012 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s Basketball Tournament known as ‘The Big Dance’ offers 68 Division 1 basketball teams (27 teams are automatic qualifiers for the tournament by winning their individual conference tournaments and an additional 37 teams that are selected by getting the nod of the tournament ‘Selection Committee’ based on the teams “body of work” during the 2011 – 2012 basketball season), along with 4 additional teams that get a chance to play enduring an elimination round at the University of Dayton Arena the opportunity to lift the Championship Trophy and be crowned the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion. To become the Championship team, they will have to win all 6 games they play in the tournament. The teams that will be playing this year will be announced beginning at 6 p.m. Eastern on CBS television this Sunday, March 11, 2012.

March Madness takes us to and from various arenas around the country ending up in New Orleans from March 30th-April 1st for the Final Four. The teams are ‘seeded’ ranked from 1st to 68th in 4 regional brackets with 16 teams in each bracket (1 plays 16, 2 plays 15, 3 plays 14,…….8 plays 9, I think you get the idea), along with the 4 play-in teams.

 It’s a fairly complicated process that pits the best teams in Men’s NCAA Division 1 Basketball against each other in competition for the title of National Champion. If you’re not fully engrossed in March Madness you can follow this link to learn more (2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Principles and Procedures).

‘The Big Dance’ is the culmination of an endurance test that starts in the fall of each year.  NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball is composed of 346 teams in 32 conferences plus 4 independent schools all starting the season working to get there’. The chances of reaching the tournament are 1 in 5. Those really don’t sound like bad odds. What makes March Madness a great sports event is the opportunity for an ‘underdog’ to reach the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, The Final Four or even make it to the Championship Game Final.

 It happens. In 1983 the North Carolina State (NC State) Wolfpack, coached by the legendary Jimmy Valvano (nicknamed Jimmy V), won what is considered to be one of the best Championship Final Games in the history of the sport on a last second tip-in by Lorenzo Charles after a miss by Derrick Whittenburg beating the favored University of Houston Cougars. NC State’s team was a ‘Cinderella Story’.

Last year the number 11 seed Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Rams made it into the Final Four by beating the number 1 seed Kansas in an Elite Eight game. The Butler University Bulldogs, a number 8 seed, made it into the Championship Game (two years in a row – in 2010 they were a number 5 seed) where the team played the number 3 seed University of Connecticut (UConn) Huskies. UConn was the highest seed making it to the Final Four. What happened to all the number 1 and 2 seeds? They were all obviously beaten by lower seeded teams. UConn ended up beating Butler in the Championship Game 53 – 41.

I think that there are similarities between the March Madness process and the auto glass repair and replacement (AGRR) industry. Perhaps a stretch to compare the two, but it’s my blog so here it goes…..

Imagine if the AGRR industry had a Division 1 Tournament (there are 3 NCAA men’s basketball divisions, but Division 1 is made up of the top colleges). Would the company that you work for be invited to the tournament based on how you rank in the market or markets you serve? If your answer to that question is yes, then what ‘seed’ do you think your company would receive giving you a chance to get to the Championship Game? Does the level of work and the service you provide match up to those you compete with in your markets? Yes? Great! You’re invited to ‘The Big Dance’!!

Another prerequisite for participating in the tournament is one that the NCAA tournament has too. You can only play one team from your company. If you happen to be one of those companies that operate under multiple company names in the same market you can’t expect to get them all into the AGRR tournament as that wouldn’t really be fair, so pick the one that you think can take you all the way to the end and quit trying to manipulate your odds.

Now that you’ve done all that work to make it into the big dance, is your company a highly seeded contender or are you a lowly seeded ‘underdog’? In ‘The Big Dance’ the underdog has a fighting chance. Not a great chance, but look at how the Butler Bulldogs and VCU Rams did in last year’s tournament. It happens.

Oh yeah….I forgot to also mention that the big difference with games played during March Madness versus the regular season is the tournament rule that there is never any home court advantage. Home teams often get more fouls called against the visiting teams by officials who have a tendency to do so to keep the hometown fans off their backs. All games are held on neutral courts so there is no home team advantage. Sadly that rule is suspended in the AGRR tournament to give one team an advantage. Safelite® Auto Glass gets to play all its games on a home court.

When you look at the 4 different brackets of my imaginary AGRR tournament who do you think will be the number 1 seeded company? How will it do versus the number 68 team do you think? Obviously the number 1 seed in the AGRR tourney is Safelite® Auto Glass. One of their star players is a gentleman named Ryan. You see him on television all the time (someone told me that they were going to cut those TV ads way back starting January 2nd…..guess not).

A potential problem for all of you who’ve made it into the AGRR tournament is that Safelite® Auto Glass decided to take the number 1 seed in all four brackets. Remember I mentioned earlier that no company could play under different names, but I didn’t say that there weren’t advantages to being the big guy and they have so many players that they get into all 4 brackets as the number 1 seed. And Safelite® owns most of the basketball courts (markets) and it has cornered the basketball market (insurers, fleets and cash customers, even suppliers) so they get to make most of the rules in the tournament. Now who do you think has better odds to win? The chances for a ‘Cinderella Team’ getting into the Final Four are tough as the odds are Safelite® is going to make it in with all 4 of its teams. You can imagine the odds for my hopeful Cinderella making it into the Championship Game. Sadly non-existent.

It seems to me that it’s a foregone conclusion that Safelite® has achieved the ‘dynasty’ status that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Bruins achieved from 1964-1975 (except for 1966 when the University of Texas, El Paso – UTEP Miners won and 1974 when the NC State Wolfpack won). The Bruins were coached by the legendary Coach John Wooden. But I’m still holding out hopes that someone, somewhere will be up to the challenge of taking on Safelite®. After all, since that 17-year run where the Bruins won 15 NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Championships….they’ve only won one Championship Game since and that was in 1995.

One of President Ronald Reagan’s favorite jokes was,

Worried that their son was too optimistic, the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. Trying to dampen the boy’s spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a room piled high with nothing but horse manure. Yet instead of displaying distaste, the little boy clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to all fours, and began digging.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked.

“With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere.”

So I am optimistic that something will happen to level the playing field and give others a fair chance to realize their dreams of winning an AGRR Championship Game.

Just sayin’.