Four incidents have inspired Mike Anderson, president of Collision Advice, to help the industry perform safe and proper repairs.

The latest episode of “On the Road with — Serving Up Collision Advice” explored the incidents in Anderson’s life that have made him so passionate about helping the collision repair industry perform safe and proper repairs.

“Hopefully by sharing my ‘why’ with you, it will allow you to discover your ‘why,’” said Anderson, president of Collision Advice.

Anderson said a person’s “why” is their core purpose, or the deep-seated reason for their actions and choices.

“My ‘why’ is what drives me to do what I do,” he said.

The broadcast is now available on demand on Autobody News' YouTube channel.

Anderson said he was born in November 1962 in Washington, D.C. He graduated from high school in Maryland in 1980 when he was 17. With his parents’ permission, he joined the U.S. Air Force.

Anderson was assigned to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, one of many sites across the U.S. where nuclear missiles were stored in underground silos. As a security specialist, Anderson first protected the silos. Later, he was promoted to a convoy that sometimes swapped out nuclear warheads with satellite warheads in an effort to confuse foreign enemies.

In 1985, Anderson was discharged from the Air Force, intending to get a college degree and rejoin the military as an officer. He took a job working with his dad at a local dealership collision repair center. When he and his dad got the chance to invest in the dealership shop, and later buy out their partners, Anderson never returned to the military.

Instead, he bought out his dad in the business too in 2000, and opened a second shop in 2002. In 2010, the City of Alexandria, VA, where the shops were located, wanted to build a hospital on the site occupied by Anderson’s second shop. He sold both locations and founded Collision Advice.

Anderson said there are four incidents that made him care deeply about safe and proper repairs.

The first happened to his father, , who served in a U.S. Army Airborne division during the Vietnam era.

During a training exercise, Albert’s parachute malfunctioned. The primary didn’t deploy at all; the backup only partially. Albert shattered his left ankle on impact with the ground. He was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for two years recovering, and the injury affected his ability to walk without pain for the rest of his life.

When the Army investigated the accident, they found the parachute had been improperly packed.

“My dad’s life was forever impacted because someone did not pack my dad’s parachute properly,” Anderson said.

When Anderson later joined his dad in collision repair, his dad ingrained in him the idea that fixing someone else’s car was the equivalent of packing their parachute.

“When we repair a vehicle, we need to repair it to ensure that should it ever be in an accident again, everything in that vehicle will operate the way that it was intended to,” he said.

Anderson said other technicians told him his dad’s way was “overkill,” but it had become a fundamental belief for him.

“I could not deviate from what my dad ingrained in me,” he said.

The second incident happened while Anderson was serving in the Air Force in 1982. While on leave to attend his younger sister’s high school graduation, Anderson found out the helicopter he would’ve been flying in as part of the air escort for a missile convoy crashed, killing all six people on board — including the airman who was filling in for him.

An investigation found the crash had been caused by a mechanical failure. The helicopter’s main rotor blade had dipped out of position, struck the side of the aircraft and broken apart. When the helicopter crashed, all of the ammo on board, including several grenades, exploded in the ensuing fire.

Anderson said he didn’t know if the mechanical failure was caused by a prior repair. “All I know is people I loved and served with died,” he said.

The third incident happened in May 2022. Albert, then 83, had exploratory surgery on the left leg he’d injured in the Army training accident decades before, which still suffered from poor circulation. The surgeons said they would be able to save the leg from amputation by placing stents.

“Dad was very happy,” Anderson said.

But that night, Albert fell into a coma. The surgeons discovered they hadn’t sewn up his leg properly, and he bled internally until he went into cardiac arrest. He never woke up.

“The doctors didn’t do their job properly,” Anderson said. “Had they sewn him up correctly, he could still be alive.

“But I can’t really be angry at these doctors, because it really goes back to my dad never would have been in the hospital in May of 2022 had someone packed my dad’s parachute properly many, many years before,” he added.

“Every single time that we fix a car, we are being trusted,” Anderson said. “When that customer signs an authorization form, they’re saying ‘I’m trusting you to fix my vehicle properly.’”

The fourth incident did not affect Anderson directly, but still inspired his mindset. In 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff primarily due to an O-ring failure. Anderson said engineers warned NASA about the potential issue, but management went ahead with the launch to stay on time and under budget.

In collision repair, “we don’t call it ‘launch time,’ we call it ‘cycle time,’ and we don’t call it ‘budget,’ we call it ‘severity,’” Anderson said.

Repairers have to pay attention to cycle times, but “no KPI should ever trump a safe and proper repair,” Anderson said.

“When I go in a shop and see someone’s not doing safe and proper repairs, I ask why,” Anderson said.

Repairs have gotten much more complex than anything his dad could’ve imagined, Anderson said, but the reasons behind an improper repair have always boiled down to two possibilities: either the technician lacks the skills, experience or training to do it correctly; or they have been trained and have the right equipment, but they fail to apply their skills and knowledge correctly.

“When people are so overwhelmed with information, they can get distracted,” Anderson said. “Or some people take shortcuts because they think they know better.”

While management sets the tone in a shop, ultimately, everyone is responsible for quality, Anderson said — of customer service, estimates, documentation and the resulting repair itself.

That includes insurers. Anderson said practices like requiring a repair plan to be uploaded within two to four hours or limiting the allowed number of line items encourages repairers to not apply everything they know.

“When [an insurance carrier] is not paying for something that’s required to be safe and proper, that’s part of the problem,” Anderson added.

“We should always prioritize customer safety,” he said. “It shouldn’t be about repair vs. replace. It shouldn’t be about alternative parts usage. It shouldn’t be about cycle time. It shouldn’t be about gross profit.”

Anderson said the industry should also make every effort to educate consumers and let them make decisions.

He then asked his colleague at Collision Advice, , to share her “why.”

Driggers said she opened her first repair shop in 2001. It wasn’t long before she got caught up in the race to make the business as big and successful as possible, no matter the cost.
“I made it all about me,” she said.

In 2010, “life threw a few curveballs, and that really forced me to pause and reflect, and get back to why am I doing what I’m doing,” she said.

After reading “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by , Driggers thought about what the people in her life — family, friends and colleagues — would say at her funeral. “It wasn’t what I wanted it to be,” she said. “Nothing was ever good enough; she was a dictator.”

Driggers “pressed into my faith” and came to the realization that “I was created with a purpose to serve people, to care about people, and lead with excellence. For a long time, I thought it wasn’t possible to do both, but I learned that’s not true.”

Repairers can “strive for excellence and lead teams and make sure we’re doing safe and proper repairs, but also caring for people,” she said.

“That is my why: who I want to be, the legacy I want to leave,” Driggers said. “I want to be a light in what can be a dark world. The impact I’m having on the people around me is bringing people closer to where they want to be, not tearing them down.”

The next episode of “On the Road with Mike Anderson” is set for 4 p.m. EST July 14. Anderson will broadcast live from Ultimate Auto Body in New Jersey.

He will talk about “The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace” with special guest Dr. , who co-wrote the book with .

White will teach how collision repairers can better their businesses through showing authentic appreciation to their team members.