All hail the repair shops

The rush to fix storm-damaged cars and buildings is slamming workers

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News

Francisco Gallardo’s phone started ringing half an hour after the April 14 storm delivered two-, three-, and even four-inch hail to Madison.

By the next day, the Waunkee-based roofer Gallardo had gotten at least 75 calls, more in a single day than he’s ever gotten in his 13 years running Gallardo Roofing LLC. His team has since inspected more than 120 roofs, and most of them are damaged. He’s still getting at least a dozen calls a day, with dozens of jobs waiting to be scheduled. 

Nate Eveland, owner of Isthmus Roofing, has also been inundated with requests, which started streaming in minutes after the hail stopped falling. Eveland has worked as a roofer for decades, and seen other weather-related demand surges. But he says this storm was “exponentially worse,” — due to the sheer size of the hail and concentration over a dense urban environment.

He understands the rush and panic. He says he’s seen houses where hail punched holes through vents, skylights, and plywood. But he’s also urging customers, along with his team, to take a beat when thinking about the next roof that will last two and a half decades. 

“We sort of like to slow it down,” says Eveland. “Let’s focus on actual construction and what’s going to help long term.” Eveland says one of his goals is to help customers avoid needing a new roof the next time there’s hail. He’s pushing a rubbery type of shingle that’s “impact-resistant.” 

For roofers, a part of the job is helping customers navigate their insurance. Eveland’s noticed a shift in policies in the last decade: insurers are often not paying for the full cost of replacement, but rather the actual cost of a roof’s cash value. Instead of the storm bringing a windfall of a new roof, he sees more customers stuck with covering some of the expense. 

Tyler Leverty, a professor who researches risk and insurance markets at the UW-Madison School of Business, concurs that “not all policies are created equal.” He says he can’t confirm the trend Eveland is seeing, because the data does not exist. But consumers want lower insurance prices, says Leverty. Insuring roofs at actual cost is typically cheaper. 

The April 14 hailstorm has been the talk of the town, particularly on the hard-hit east and north sides of Madison. Entire neighborhood blocks are simultaneously navigating settlements with insurance companies and the challenge of securing bids to get roofs, siding and cars repaired. It is time-consuming and anxiety-provoking. On the other side of the equation, service shops and home repair companies are slammed, working overtime and finding it hard to keep up. 

On April 27, 13 days after the hailstorm, Sparkle Auto Body, an auto repair shop on Packers Avenue, is hopping. The calls for estimates haven’t stopped coming in since the storm, say the workers answering the phones. 

Do they have a moment to talk with Isthmus? “We’re so overwhelmed that we don’t,” says Hugh Horsfall, who steps out to talk, briefly, anyway. “We’re working six days a week and we’re only falling behind, because there’s thousands of people affected by this. And we’re doing the best we can.”

Some customers are getting repair estimates before they’ve gotten an estimate from their insurance. That means Sparkle might not get the job if the car gets totalled, and they could’ve used the time to repair another car. Then there are supply chain issues: “There’s only so many glass vendors. There’s only so much glass,” says Horsfall. And, he adds, “There’s only so many people out there who can do the work.”  

I show myself to the door. Horsfall adds apologetically, “We’re trying to give people service the best we can. And every second counts right now.” As I leave, his colleague at the front desk says I’m the best visit today. “I’m so glad you didn’t ask for an adjustment,” he says with a relieved grin. 

Over at Lynch Auto Body on Atwood Avenue, owner Timothy Lynch has been putting in 16-hour days. In the last several weeks he’s looked at more than 550 cars. 

“We’ll probably be fixing hail cars into this winter,” he says. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Some longtime customers knew he’d be inundated. They tell him they’re waiting. “I’m committed to helping everybody out,” says Lynch. “You know as well as I do, that it takes time.” 

Todd Hetrick has owned Madison Auto Glass, a local independent auto glass shop, for 15 years. You can hear the traffic from Highway 151 from his shop, where he agrees to talk with Isthmus only if he can work on an SUV’s back windshield at the same time. Windshield replacements take him about 30 minutes to an hour, and he, too, has been working a lot of them.

He estimates he’s given 2,000 quotes in the last few weeks. Hundreds of texts, calls, and emails rolled in the night of the storm and the day after. The people who tried to call, text, and email at the same time had “no mercy,” and he’s never seen people panic quite like this. His phone only died down once he put a banner on his website saying he couldn’t accept new customers right now. 

He tried to prioritize. He fixed squad cars and ambulances and medical rides, vehicles that were “out and about that got blasted.” But the storm has overwhelmed the system and the supply chain. He’s located right by the only auto glass supplier in Madison, but there’s only so much glass. The next closest supply is Chicago, but when they run out, they’re shipping it in from overseas. 

At least Hetrick gets to rest one day a week: Saturdays, which he doesn’t work because the auto glass supplier is also closed.If he runs into a snag on a customer’s car then, there’d be nothing he could do. 

Edgar Nevarez started his job as general manager of Gerber Collision & Glass on Commercial Avenue just as the storm hit and says it’s been “insane” at the shop. 

Outside Gerber, there are out of-state-workers with Progressive, one of several large insurers to set up hail clinics near dealerships and repair shops. Soon, this team will be on their way to adjust claims for hail that fell in Georgia: another severe storm in a changing climate, where hail, convective storms, and tornadoes are becoming more frequent and severe. 

Is that straining the insurance market? Yes and no, says Leverty, the insurance professor at UW. While it’s not affecting the way claims are handled, changing climate patterns are changing what’s available at all. 

Wisconsin’s severe weather has shifted in recent decades, according to the Wisconsin State Climatology Office. Severe weather has typically peaked in July, but now spreads out more frequently throughout the summer. It’s also picking up on the cusps — in March, April, and September. 

“We see a lot of insurers actually changing how willing they are to provide insurance to Midwest properties,” says Leverty. “There’s notable examples of companies deciding just to completely get out of Midwest states because they’re worried about frequency and severity of these convective storms.”