RV and Commercial Vehicle Collision Repair in Yorba Linda

The published band on this work is $1,000 to $150,000 and up. In practice most claims land in three clusters. Minor impact with no structural involvement runs roughly $1,000 to $5,000 and 5 to 25 hours. Moderate damage involving a cap, a slide face or a sidewall section runs roughly $5,000 to $20,000 and 30 to 100 hours. Major structural work involving frame correction, multiple caps, or fire and rollover damage starts around $20,000 and has no practical ceiling.

Every one of those numbers is labor hours times our posted body and paint rate of $210 per hour, plus paint supplies at $55 per paint hour, plus parts at the posted markup. Nothing is hidden and nothing is invented.

This is the single biggest source of frustration in collision repair and it is almost never explained properly, so here is the mechanism.

An initial estimate is written from visible damage. Teardown removes the skin and exposes what the impact actually did underneath. On RVs this reveals hidden damage on the large majority of structural claims, because a laminated wall transmits force well past the point of visible failure. The supplement documents the newly discovered damage with photographs and measurements and goes to the carrier for approval before that work is performed.

A supplement is not a shop adding charges. It is the carrier being shown what was actually broken. If a shop never writes supplements, it either is not tearing vehicles down or it is absorbing the difference in quality.

This matters enormously for camper vans and modified coaches, and it is where most owners lose money.

Solar arrays, lithium banks, custom cabinetry, roof racks, awnings and interior conversions are frequently not itemized on a policy, and a carrier cannot pay for what is not documented. We photograph and itemize aftermarket work before disassembly, with receipts where the owner has them, and submit it as part of the claim. Doing that after the van is already in pieces is far harder and often too late.

Shop hours and calendar days are different things. A 60 hour repair is not eight days, because carrier approval and parts sit in between.

A realistic stage breakdown looks like this: estimate one day, carrier approval two to five days, teardown one to two days, supplement approval three to seven days, parts five to fifteen days, then body, paint, reassembly and quality control. Most moderate claims run three to six weeks. Structural claims run longer and we tell you that at intake rather than at week five.