Mankato Magazine: Jerry's Body Shop

By Tim Krohn

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Jerry Kottschade, a farm boy from Kellogg, was attending MSU when he went to work at Ben’s Beeline auto body shop on Rock Street in Mankato. When the business went bankrupt, Kottschade bought it and started Jerry’s Body Shop.

Today, 36 years later, Jerry and his wife, Geralynn, are far removed from the one-man shop — operating out of a spacious, modern building off Madison Avenue and employing 16 people.

They’ve brought some 54,000 vehicles back to pre-accident condition for motorists across the region and grown into one of the largest collision-repair centers.

Their son, Daniel, is studying auto body repair at Ridgewater College in Willmar.

Jerry and Geralynn, of Madison Lake, have been married 24-years. She started working with Jerry in the early 1980s and in 1987 they made a big move building the current shop. They expanded it to double its size in 1993.

Geralynn handles the financial end of the business, helps with day-to-day production and deals with insurance companies.

Mankato Magazine: What’s different on the vehicles today compared to those you worked on years ago?

Jerry Kottschade: The computer systems are a big change. You need a lot of diagnostic equipment to do repairs.

Geralynn Kottschade: The computers are different on each vehicle. If we put a new cargo door on a van you have to figure our how to reprogram the computer that opens and closes the door. The whole design of vehicles has changed a lot.

MM: How much does business go up in the winter?

JK: A lot.

GK: Except we haven’t had any real winters for a few years now.

JK: There are fewer crashes in the winter. That de-icer they put down on the roads before it snows really does help.

GK: Actually things pick up in the fall with deer hits. There was a lot of deer crashes this year. And turkeys, too, now. A lot of time they do more damage than the deer.

JK: Cell phones are good for our business. Everybody texting and dialing while they’re driving.

MM: Is the damage from crashes different now than it used to be?

JK: There are a lot fewer crashes and claims, nationwide, than there used to be. All the accident avoidance equipment on vehicles has really helped. The monitors on the back of vehicle that goes off if you get too close to something. They help a lot.

GK: We actually see more vehicles we total out. But they’re still a lot safer vehicles. The whole car will be just wrecked but the passenger compartments are really protected well.

We just had one in where everything was smashed, but she had her seatbelt on and she walked away from it. It’s a testament to seatbelts.

MM: What else is different?

JK: We repair a lot more high-mileage vehicles now. They run a lot longer and people don’t have the money or don’t want to spend the money on a new vehicle.

GK: It used to be that if a car had 80,000 miles on it and it was damaged, it was just about automatic we’d total it. Now, a good share of the vehicles out there have over 100,000 on them.

MM: What’s the advantages and disadvantages of working together?

GK: The bad part is when you go home and you need to vent about work — you’re with the guy you work with.

We respect each other’s turf. It’s nice to have a sounding board when you need to talk something out.

MM: How’s the technology changing in your business?

JK: It’s changing all the time. We just bought a computerized, automatic welder. You program in what you’re working on — say the front left panel of a Camry. The computer tells you where to make cuts, exactly where to spot weld it, everything just the way it was done in the factory.

We have a new automated wheel alignment machine. We have the paint-baking stalls.

It’s all very expensive. But ignorance is more expensive.

GK: We have a computer on the shop floor. The technicians can go on the Internet and get the specifications for any vehicle ever made. It tells them the repair procedures, parts lists, everything.

MM: How’s insurance changed?

GK: It’s a lot more complex, but it’s easier communicating, with the Internet. We can send the insurance companies the photos of the vehicle, do the estimates, order the parts, do the billing and get paid electronically by the insurance companies.

We see a lot more people paying cash for their vehicle or the other person’s vehicle when they’re at fault, instead of filing a claim. They don’t want to have that claim on their record.

MM: What’s been your involvement in the industry?

GK: We’ve both been involved in a lot of national associations. It’s helped us keep up and improve. We toured an after-market parts factory in Taiwan. We’ve both been the heads of a lot of associations and panels. I’ve been the first woman chair on a lot of them. I was kind of proud of that.