Head-on change: Spruce Park Auto Body meets new challenges sweeping collision repair industry.

• Author: Loy, Wesley
• Position: SERVICES

So you banged up your new car during that first snowfall of the year. No problem. Just take it to the body shop and let them bang out the dents and touch up the paint.

Simple, right?

Turns out it's not nearly as simple as it once was, at least not for the professionals in the collision repair industry. Automobiles are evolving rapidly, which is a good thing on many levels but a major challenge for body men.

Just ask Lewis "Chuck" Perrault, president of Spruce Park Auto Body, Inc. on East Dowling Road in Anchorage.

"There are awful big changes coming to our industry," he says.

Complex, Advanced Materials

Auto manufacturers increasingly are using advanced materials in today's cars and light trucks, including complex steels and carbon fiber. These materials are thinner, lighter, and stronger, helping the car makers meet toughening government standards for fuel economy and crash safety.

More and more, the cars on the clean and spacious work floor at Spruce Park Auto Body are taking on the characteristics of space ships, pushing Perrault's body technicians to new limits.

The advanced metals in these cars are not only lighter and stronger, but much more finicky to work with. It means tools and techniques body men used for decades are now obsolete, says Perrault, with some fifty years in the business.

"I grew up with a solder bar, a pick hammer, and a file," he says. "You can't use that anymore. It's changed drastically."

A Family Business

Spruce Park is one of Alaska's busiest body shops. An average of 140 vehicles a month cycle through the shop, which has a team of three estimators, six body technicians, and three painters.

Understandably, business is best in winter. When the first snow flies in autumn, the phone starts ringing and tow trucks pile in.

Spruce Park is a family business, with Perrault's wife, Shirley, serving as secretary-treasurer and their son, Ken, handling much of the day-to-day management of the shop.

Chuck Perrault, seventy-four, is from Wisconsin originally and has a ready smile. Why come to Alaska? "Hunting and fishing, just like everybody else," he says.

Spruce Park got its start in 1963, four years after Alaska became a state. The Perraults bought the operation in 1976, and in 2001 moved into a sparkling new building on East Dowling, a bustling four-lane road lined with automotive businesses.

Chuck Perrault says the family traveled to Seattle to look at body shops and pick up ideas to make their new space as efficient as...