Big Sky PDR
Big Sky PDR has a very narrow and solid business focus: We serve body shops, exclusively for hail damage repair, by providing both consulting services and highly-qualified and trustworthy PDR technicians to work in your shop. Our market area is also focused; we serve shops in Montana, Northern Wyoming, and the Western Dakotas. Since we’re based in the greater Billings, MT area, this means that no place in our market area is more than a day’s drive from our management.
Services
If it hails in your shop’s market area and you need PDR technicians to help with repairs, you’re very likely to end up with technicians from out of your state. The reason for this is very simple: Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas have considerably less hail than do all the states to our south and east, and therefore, we have fewer local PDR technicians available to repair the damage. Even when it hails in New York City, most of the technicians who end up working there are not from New York! If it’s true for them, then it’s certainly going to be true for us.
Getting technicians from out of state can be risky for several reasons, however. We understand this at Big Sky PDR, so we’ve built our business plan around your needs. In a nutshell, here’s what we offer:
- Our management (in Billings, MT) personally consults with each shop to understand your situation fully before we ever send you a technician. This means that the techs know what to expect before they get there, which significantly cuts down on techs leaving a repair operation early.
- We walk you through a list of repair-related tasks that need to be done, deciding whether your shop or our technicians will perform each. (Examples: estimating, car washing, R&I, etc.) This helps all parties involved to be informed as to what to expect and it lessens the risk of unrealistic expectations.
- We send you technicians that we personally know to be qualified and trustworthy.
- We provide you with a written warranty for their work in your shop. If a repair doesn’t meet your (or your customer’s) standards, we will, at our discretion, either send a technician to fix it, or we’ll pay for conventional repair of that panel.
- In the early and late stages of your hail repair work, when the flow of repairs is erratic, we work with you and our technicians to get as many as possible of those vehicles fixed. Sometimes this means our technicians jump from shop to shop, as needed both to get your repairs done, and to keep the technicians busy (which is required to keep them happy!) Or sometimes it means that we even dispatch a member of management to do a repair here or there. The big point here is that we don’t just run off when your repairs get slow and there’s steadier work someplace else!
- We teach your estimators how to accurately estimate hail damage for PDR. This is especially valuable with the early vehicles and the “straggler” vehicles that show up when there is no PDR technician handy for an estimate. Further, it means that since you can do an accurate estimate the first time, no supplements will be required once the technician is on site to begin the repair.
- We provide multi-part PDR estimating forms for your use.
- We provide a post-PDR quality control inspection sheet for each vehicle. Our technicians sign off that they believe each panel repaired to be free of hail damage, and the shop is encouraged to have a representative inspect each panel as well. This means that if there’s a problem, it’s going to be noticed (and fixed) before the customer ever sees the vehicle.
Our Philosophy
One of our basic philosophies is “Win/Win”. That is, we believe that at the end of doing business together, our shops, our technicians, and Big Sky PDR should all be happy and willing to do it all over again when it hails near your shop again next year. If everybody walks away feeling like a “winner” in the deal, that’s how you know it was the right deal.
We also believe in doing the job right the first time. In fact, our founder, Jack Pelham, not only teaches PDR periodically at MSU Billings’ College of Technology, but is also busy developing PDRStandards.org, which will establish and promote standards and best practices for the very fragmented PDR industry. PDR has proven itself as an awesome method of repair for hail damage, but unfortunately, finding technicians who will work diligently to do the job right the first time is not as easy as it should be.
The two parties who are hurt the most by this problem are the body shop and the vehicle owner. That’s why the body shop could really use a partner whose interest is in seeing the entire process done well, from the scheduling, to the estimating, to the repair and the presentation of the vehicle to the owner.
Meanwhile, we also look out for our technicians. We want to be sure that the shop is fully informed as to what to expect, and that there is indeed enough work to justify a technician traveling to your location. We pay them very well for their services, and we want them to be eager to answer the phone the next time we call.
About Jack Pelham
Jack Pelham is Big Sky PDR’s founder and Chief Operating Officer. Jack has worked as an innovator in the hail damage industry for six years, in both automotive paintless dent repair (PDR) and hail reporting/alerting technology. First obtaining training as a PDR technician, he quickly moved through the industry, wearing several hats from technician to PDR company salesman and mobile hail damage scout to occasional PDR instructor at Montana State University (Billings) College of Technology.
Jack is also the co-inventor of a patent-pending method of accurately and easily estimating large dents for PDR and Push-to-Paint (PTP). Along the way, it became obvious to Jack that there was a need for a state-of-the-art hail alerting and reporting service unlike any that previously existed. In response to this and other opportunities, Jack co-founded Thinkulus Media, LLC in 2009, serving as Project Manager for several projects including HailReporter.com and PDRJunction.com, which is an information clearinghouse for the PDR industry.
Most recently, Jack has launched PDR Roadshow, which is a traveling service offering PDR-related seminars and technical training, including how to maximize PDR profits in the body shop and how to estimate accurately for PDR. Practical instruction in PDR, as well as in the increasingly popular push-to-paint (PTP) technicque is also offered. Jack is also working to establish standards and best practices for the PDR industry through PDRStandards.org.
Jack holds a Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University and has a wide-ranging professional experience set that ranges from law clerk to piano sales to instruction at both the high school and university level.
So when you choose Big Sky PDR, you’re not just getting a PDR company that’s interested in making a sale, but one that’s interested in seeing the entire PDR industry get better and better.
