What a Body Shop Owner Is Actually Selling

Short answer: No purchase agreement for a collision shop sale was found in any public source in this pass. The terms deciding whether a sale was good for the seller are unestablished for every transaction examined. What is documented is the multiple, the property, the covenant and the silence.

By Anthony Braswell for Quorum Industries LLC, The Autobody Directory · Updated 2026-09-01 · How this was written, and what the machine may not do

How this page was produced: Researched, drafted and checked with AI assistance under human direction, and signed off by the named author. How this site is written

That absence matters because of who else is at the table. [REPORTED] Crash Champions says on its own sell-your-shop page that it has "successfully integrated hundreds of independent collision repair teams into the Crash Champions organization". [REPORTED] Boyd Group's audited accounts record 21 acquisitions in 2025 and 33 in 2024. The buyer has read this document many times. Everything below comes from documents that exist independently of any sale: a public buyer's audited accounts, a franchise agreement filed with a state regulator, court opinions and statutes. An interested party's material is labelled as that party's statement. This page is ASCII only, so dashes and curly marks are rendered as hyphens and straight marks and the section symbol is rendered as [section]; nothing inside a quotation has been changed or removed without an ellipsis. Tiers: [ADJUDICATED] court holding, [ALLEGED] unproven pleading, [REPORTED] an entity's own statement or journalism, [DISPUTED] conflicting sources.

What the buyer asks for first

[REPORTED] Crash Champions publishes a "sell your shop" intake form. Its fields, in order: Your Name, Phone Number, Email, Name of Your Business, Address, Number of Locations, Years in Business, OE Certifications, DRP Agreements. Before revenue, square footage or headcount, the acquirer asks for manufacturer certifications and insurer direct repair agreements. [REPORTED] A seller's banker says the same from the other side: announcing Key Collision's sale of its ten-location New England platform to Caliber Collision on 31 August 2026, Focus Advisors wrote that "Key Collision's broad insurance relationships, reputation for exceptional repair quality, and extensive footprint across northern New England made it a compelling acquisition target."

A direct repair agreement is a contract between the carrier and the shop entity, and the seller does not own the carrier. Whether any such agreement carries a change-of-control or anti-assignment clause was not established here in either direction; none was obtained. It is the highest-value missing document in this subject, because it decides whether what the buyer asks about first transfers at all.

Which multiple is being quoted at you

One collision transaction has both sides of the arithmetic in public, because the buyer is listed and had to state the terms. [REPORTED] Boyd Group Services announced on 29 October 2025 its agreement to buy Joe Hudson's Collision Center, a 258-location chain. Its reconciliation table for the trailing twelve months to 30 June 2025, in thousands of US dollars, prints sales of 722 million, a net loss of 23,200, interest expense 55,575, adjusted EBITDA 63,116 and operating lease cost 40,993. The price sentence, complete, because the qualifier changes the number: "The purchase price of $1.3 billion represents a purchase price multiple, net of expected tax benefits of approximately $150 million, of 13.3x JHCC Adjusted EBITDA assuming run-rate adjustments for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2025." After full effect is given to synergies, "the acquisition is valued at approximately 9.3x JHCC Adjusted EBITDA". The footnote supplies both adjustments: "approximately $24 million of additional JHCC Adjusted EBITDA" had the last twelve months' acquisitions been owned throughout, plus "approximately $37 million" more from run-rate cost synergies. The arithmetic below is this page's, from the buyer's figures.

1,300 - 150 = 1,150 million dollars net of tax benefit 1,150 / 63.1 as reported = 18.2x this page's, not Boyd's 1,150 / 87.1 run-rate adjusted = 13.2x Boyd states 13.3x 1,150 / 124.1 plus full synergies = 9.3x Boyd states 9.3x 1,300 / 63.1 gross of the tax benefit = 20.6x this page's, not Boyd's

Boyd states two multiples and only two: 13.3x and 9.3x. The synergy line reproduces 9.3x exactly. The 0.1x on the line above it is the word "approximately" in the footnote: 13.3x implies a run-rate addition of about 23.4 million dollars rather than a rounded 24 million, and 23.4 million reproduces 13.3x and 9.3x together off the same 63,116. The first and last lines are divisions this page performed on Boyd's own published numbers, and Boyd publishes neither result.

[DISPUTED, RESOLVED AS TO ARITHMETIC] A sell-side adviser wrote on 4 February 2026 that accounting adjustments had reduced the "book multiple" from "something closer to 20x." The same sentence defines the term: a "book multiple" is "purchase price divided by the company's stated EBITDA before adjustments". 1,300 divided by 63.1 is 20.6, so the adviser's defined figure and the last line above are the same calculation. Both accounts are right: the whole gap between 20.6x and 9.3x is the run-rate adjustment and the tax benefit, which are the buyer's facts, not the seller's. The same business, on the same day, on the same earnings, is a 20.6x deal, a 13.3x deal or a 9.3x deal depending only on which adjustments are counted. A seller told "we pay around 9x" and a seller told "this is worth about 20x" may be hearing the same offer. The question is not what multiple, but a multiple of which number, after which adjustments, and net of what tax benefit.

[REPORTED] At the other end of the market the same adviser published its own illustration on 26 February 2026, in a piece by David Roberts headed "Year in Review 2025: Slowdown, and Then a Blockbuster". Its worked example prints, as a column of figures rather than a sentence, Revenue $30MM, EBITDA per cent about 15, EBITDA about $4.5MM, purchase price about $31.5MM, "MULTIPLE 7.0X". It is a sensitivity illustration, not a disclosed deal, and the adviser's point is what it does in reverse: "at a 7.0x multiple, a 10% revenue decline can translate into nearly a 20% drop in enterprise value."

What is deferred, and what your covenant is worth on the buyer's books

[REPORTED] Boyd's audited fiscal 2025 accounts, filed as Exhibit 99.3 to its Form 40-F on 18 March 2026, state: "The Company completed 21 acquisitions that added 43 collision repair locations and one calibration business during the year ended December 31, 2025." The consideration table, in thousands of US dollars: cash paid or payable 113,317; seller notes 7,462; total consideration 120,779. Computed here, seller notes were 6.2 per cent of that consideration and 5.5 per cent of the prior year's. Part of the price is routinely not cash at closing, and nothing about the rate, term, subordination or set-off of those notes is public.

The same note allocates the price: identifiable net assets 66,869 against goodwill 53,910, and within the identifiable assets, customer relationships 34,145, brand name 280, and non-compete agreements 2,158. That last line matters. The covenant a seller signs is not a formality; it is an identifiable intangible asset the buyer books at a value, carried that year at more than seven times the 280 thousand dollars allocated to brand name across the same 21 acquisitions. The same filing states how it is written off: "Contractual rights, which consist of non-compete agreements and favourable lease agreements, are amortized on a straight-line basis over the term of the contract." Two limits on that number, both the filing's own: it is an aggregate across all 21 acquisitions and not one seller's covenant, and "The preliminary purchase prices for the 2025 acquisitions may be revised as additional information becomes available."

The covenant survives every ban

Every prohibition on non-competes read here carves out the covenant a seller gives a buyer. [REPORTED] The Federal Trade Commission's Non-Compete Clause Rule, 89 FR 38342, 7 May 2024, said so in its preamble: "The final rule does not apply to non-competes entered into by a person pursuant to a bona fide sale of a business entity."

[ADJUDICATED] The rule is gone. In Ryan LLC v. Federal Trade Commission, No. 3:24-cv-00986 (N.D. Tex.), Judge Ada E. Brown ordered on 20 August 2024 that "The Non-Compete Rule, 16 C.F.R. [section] 910.1-.6, is hereby SET ASIDE and shall not be enforced or otherwise take effect on September 4, 2024, or thereafter", recording that setting aside agency action has "nationwide effect". [REPORTED] On 5 September 2025 the Commission announced that it had voted 3 to 1 to dismiss its appeals and "to accede to the vacatur of the Non-Compete Clause Rule." Instrument control, because the next sentence is a negative claim: a request for 16 CFR Part 910 in the current electronic Code of Federal Regulations returns HTTP 404, while the identical request form run against a part known to exist returned 16 CFR Part 436, sections 436.1 to 436.11 and six appendices, in full. The instrument works, so there is no federal non-compete rule in the Code of Federal Regulations as at 2026-09-01.

[REPORTED] California voids employee non-competes and preserves the seller's. Business and Professions Code section 16601 lets a person who sells the goodwill of a business "agree with the buyer to refrain from carrying on a similar business within a specified geographic area in which the business so sold ... has been carried on". The section does not stop there, and the rest of it is the seller's, so it is quoted too: the covenant holds "so long as the buyer, or any person deriving title to the goodwill or ownership interest from the buyer, carries on a like business therein."

[REPORTED] Minnesota Statutes 181.988 is headed "COVENANTS NOT TO COMPETE VOID IN EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENTS". Subdivision 2(a) makes any covenant not to compete "void and unenforceable", and subdivision 2(b)(1) makes one valid and enforceable where it "is agreed upon during the sale of a business." The same paragraph states what it permits and no more: the seller and the buyer "may agree on a temporary and geographically restricted covenant not to compete that will prohibit the seller of the business from carrying on a similar business within a reasonable geographic area and for a reasonable length of time." In the three regimes read here the ban does not reach the covenant a seller gives a buyer, and in two of them the carve-out is written with limits inside it. We are not claiming this holds in the forty-eight states not read.

The buyer will want the seller's people bound too, and Minnesota's subdivision 1 provides that "A covenant not to compete does not include a nonsolicitation agreement, or agreement restricting the ability to use client or contact lists, or solicit customers of the employer." The statutory ban therefore does not reach an agreement of that kind. Whether one is enforceable is a separate question the statute does not answer.

Enforcement in this trade, on the record

[ADJUDICATED, preliminary injunction only] A federal court has enforced this covenant in this trade, and the same opinion is the best record of the limits on it. In Maaco Franchising, Inc. v. Augustin, No. 09-4548 (E.D. Pa., 20 April 2010), Judge Louis H. Pollak granted the motion in part and denied it in part, ordering that "Maaco's request for a preliminary injunction enforcing its covenant not compete is granted with respect to a ten-mile radius around the Augustins' former Maaco franchise; the requirement not to compete will expire on June 30, 2010." In the same order, "The request for a preliminary injunction barring misappropriation of Maaco's trade secrets is denied", because the court found that Maaco's vice president of operations "and Maaco have not identified any aspect of the Maaco System that meets the requirement of substantial secrecy". The typographical error in the first quotation is the court's, on both retrievals.

Three things the court refused, all of which matter to anyone signing a covenant. It refused to start the clock at its own order: Maaco argued the year should run from the order or from the day the former franchisee stopped competing, and the court held that covenants not to compete are strictly construed as "a partial restraint upon the free exercise of trade" and that "violation of a covenant not to compete does not extend the period of a covenant." It said what a drafter could do about that: "If Maaco wanted such protection, it could have included language extending the covenant in the event it was violated." And it expressly declined to rule on the wide radius, noting in a footnote that because enforcement was sought only around the one centre, "I need not address whether enforcement of the ten mile radius from all other Maaco franchisees would be reasonable." Against the franchisee, the court found the one-year term and the ten-mile radius reasonable under Pennsylvania law, and rejected an unclean-hands defence built on Maaco's alleged broken promises about relocation costs, signage, rent and help selling the franchise.

[REPORTED] The covenant in the current document is drafted the way the 2010 court said it could have been. The Maaco franchise agreement filed with the December 2025 Franchise Disclosure Document binds a franchisee "for a period of one (1) year" not to hold any interest in a competing business "at the premises of the Center or within a radius of ten (10) miles of the Center or of any other Maaco Center or Maaco location that is then operating or under development or construction". The year does not start at the end of the franchise. It runs from "whichever of the following events occurs later", and that list of five now includes "a final arbitration or court order (after all appeals have been taken) concerning any of the foregoing or concerning the enforcement of this Paragraph 18C". The 2010 agreement listed two events and no court order. We are not saying the clause was changed because of that case; we are saying what the two documents say and in which order they were written. Cutting the other way, the same paragraph gives the franchisor "the right to reduce the scope of any covenant" without the franchisee's consent. [REPORTED] A currency note, because the registry moved after that filing: Minnesota cancelled Maaco Franchisor SPV LLC's franchise registration on 27 July 2026 for failure to file an annual report and fee under Minn. Stat. 80C.08. That is a registration, not a contract, and the order says nothing about covenants in agreements already signed.

[REPORTED, settled without any merits determination] The most striking number in the sector surfaced through a franchisor's mandatory litigation disclosure rather than a court portal. In Collision Consolidation Co. v. Maaco Franchisor SPV LLC, No. 23-7248-CB, Circuit Court for the County of Ottawa, Michigan, filed 14 April 2023, a multi-unit franchisee alleged fraudulent inducement over representations in the disclosure document delivered "in connection with the plaintiff's purchase of multiple Maaco Centers from one or more existing Maaco franchisees", and sought a judgment declaring "that the non-competition covenants in its franchise agreements were void and unenforceable." As disclosed, the court dismissed the North Carolina unfair and deceptive trade practices claim, and the parties then settled on or about 12 December 2023, the remaining claims being "dismissed with prejudice, and the plaintiff agreed to pay Maaco a total of $5.5 million in exchange for termination of the franchise agreements (and the corresponding personal guarantees) and the development agreement." No court decided the fraud claim and none ruled on the covenants; a settlement without admission resolves nothing about the facts. What it records is a number and who paid it: the buyer of those shops paid 5.5 million dollars to get out of the contracts and the guarantees.

What is not public, and the one filed document that shows its shape

No purchase agreement for the sale of an independent collision shop to a consolidator was located in any public source in this pass. The asset-versus-equity election, the earn-out formula, the working capital peg, the escrow and holdback, the indemnity caps, the rollover equity and the seller's post-closing employment agreement are unestablished for every transaction examined. Anyone who says what is "market" for them is speaking from private experience that cannot be checked.

[ADJUDICATED] The one such document a court has construed is the listing agreement. In Victus 1, Inc. d/b/a Benchmark Business Brokers v. Bradshaw's Body Shop, Inc., No. 56,783-CA (La. App. 2 Cir., 8 April 2026), a clause providing that on cancellation or withdrawal during the listing term "the commission (based on the asking price) shall become immediately due by Seller to Broker" was enforced against a body shop owner. The commission and attorney fees stood as to the business. The award was reversed so far as it rested on an asking price of 1,300,000 dollars that included the real property, because the parties never executed the written amendment adding the property, and the case was remanded to fix the business-only value and the commission on it.

The buyers publish nothing either. [REPORTED] Classic Collision offers "a fair price" plus the one concrete term any buyer publishes: "if you own real estate, we are able to purchase it as part of the transaction or provide you a stable and solid long-term return if you wish to retain ownership of the site." [REPORTED] Quality Collision Group offers "We keep your brand intact". Neither states a multiple, a timeline, an earn-out or a post-closing role.

[REPORTED] One filed document shows the shape of the terms without disclosing any. Exhibit B to the Maaco franchise agreement, headed "DILIGENCE ITEMS", lists what a franchisee must hand the franchisor before selling to a third party. First: "An exact duplicate of the actual signed letter of intent between Franchisee and the third-party purchaser that includes: a. The assets being purchased; b. The purchase price; and c. All other material terms (including, but not limited to, a detailed listing of any hold back amounts)." Then accounts, tax returns, an employee roster with pay rates, leases and certifications. The franchisor has ninety days to match the offer, and if it does, "The purchase agreement shall contain such agreements, representations, warranties, covenants, indemnities and customer warranty reserve funds ... as are reasonably necessary." Hold backs, indemnities, warranty reserves and representations are therefore terms of collision shop sale agreements, recited in a state regulator's file. The instrument that makes them visible is a franchise obligation, and it makes them visible to the franchisor, not to you. We do not claim a consolidator's agreement contains these terms; none was read.

The building is a separate deal and may be the larger one

[REPORTED] Joe Hudson's paid 40,993 thousand dollars of operating lease cost in the twelve months to 30 June 2025 on 722 million dollars of sales, about 5.7 per cent of turnover. In the buyer's own reconciliation it is the second largest item added back between the net loss and the lease-adjusted earnings, behind interest expense of 55,575.

[REPORTED] Stuart Sorokin, managing member of Business & Legal Advisors, a consulting firm that specialises in the auto body industry, put a number on the same point to FenderBender on 13 December 2024: "I just did a deal where I sold a body shop for $8 million, but the underlying real estate they rented, they had a 20-year lease at current rent of about $300,000 a year ... So the purchase price was being dwarfed by the total lease value. And people will focus so much on the asset purchase agreement even though, potentially, the lease is the more valuable piece." It is one adviser's account of one unnamed deal, and it is the only worked comparison of a purchase price against a lease found here.

[REPORTED] The one named seller who describes the outcome in his own words kept the land. The Hall family sold Steve's Auto Body, four Arkansas shops with 55 employees and "north of $13 million in annual sales", to Joe Hudson's Collision Centers in September 2023. Steve Hall Jr. on the buyer: "I didn't want to sell to an MSO that wasn't like us", and "they're not coming in to just completely change everything." The family kept the land and leases it back, and Hall Jr. called the lease "awesome." The same interview is also the clearest published account of what a seller has to fix first: the four shops' expenses had been grouped rather than kept per site, the company built a new set of books for each shop and filed amended tax returns, and Hall Jr. said, "We were growing so rapidly and didn't realize it had gotten out of control until we got ready to sell." [REPORTED] Sorokin puts the consequence of not doing that in numbers: "Sixty percent of the deals that go to a letter of intent don't close", he told FenderBender, "and a high percentage of them (are due to) failures in due diligence." He gives a broker's fee as five to 10 per cent of sale proceeds.

A structural footnote, not an allegation against anyone: the buyer of Steve's Auto Body was itself sold about twenty-eight months later, completing on 9 January 2026 for total cash consideration of 1,285,123 thousand US dollars in the acquirer's audited subsequent-events note. The undertaking Hall Jr. describes was given by a party that no longer owns the business.

Your employees, and the regulator who is not watching

[REPORTED] 29 U.S.C. 2101(b) is headed "Exclusions from definition of employment loss". Paragraph (b)(1) puts the notice duty on the seller "up to and including the effective date of the sale" and on the purchaser "After the effective date of the sale", and then provides that "any person who is an employee of the seller (other than a part-time employee) as of the effective date of the sale shall be considered an employee of the purchaser immediately after the effective date of the sale." The sale is therefore not itself an employment loss and no federal notice is owed for it. What triggers the duty is a plant closing or mass layoff, and a plant closing requires an employment loss "during any 30-day period for 50 or more employees excluding any part-time employees" at a single site. The Act reaches only a business enterprise employing "100 or more employees, excluding part-time employees". A buyer can close an acquired shop and dismiss its whole workforce with no federal notice obligation. State plant-closing statutes were not read here.

[REPORTED] No premerger notification is owed on an ordinary shop sale either. The Hart-Scott-Rodino thresholds effective 17 February 2026 are 133.9 million dollars, below which no filing is required on size-of-transaction grounds at all, and 535.5 million dollars, above which the size-of-person test drops away and a transaction is reportable whatever the size of the parties. A single-shop sale is nowhere near the lower figure. A large multi-location platform sale is a different question and this page does not answer it. Not reportable is not the same as beyond reach: Section 7A(i)(1) of the Clayton Act provides that a failure to act under the notification section bars no proceeding under any other law, so the absence of a filing settles nothing about whether a purchase was lawful. What the thresholds establish is that nobody has to tell the agencies. The arithmetic behind them, and what a per-transaction test cannot see when a hundred shops are bought from a hundred sellers, is set out in has consolidation actually reduced the number of body shops. [REPORTED] The alternative buyer is an individual on a federally guaranteed loan, and there part of the transaction is written into regulation: 13 CFR 120.160(a) provides that "Holders of at least a 20 percent ownership interest generally must guarantee the loan." A consolidator pays with its balance sheet; an individual pays with a loan they are personally liable for.

The walls

How aggressively does a given buyer enforce covenants against people who leave? A non-compete claim against a departing technician is a state-law claim between parties usually in the same state, for an amount rarely reaching the federal amount-in-controversy floor, so it can essentially never appear in a federal docket index. A search of Justia's federal docket index on 2026-09-01 returned 37 dockets for "Crash Champions"; the first ten were read and none is a covenant case, their causes being employment discrimination, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, diversity account-receivable claims and notices of removal. The instrument answers, so that zero is real for what was read, and it is what the jurisdictional rules predict. We are not saying consolidators do not sue departing employees; we are saying the federal record cannot show it either way.

The state systems are where such a case would sit, and no state-court search was run here. Eight portals were fetched on 2026-09-01, by two independent retrieval routes, and none was queried. Wisconsin Circuit Court Access returned HTTP 200 with a title, an empty body and no form on both routes. Maryland Judiciary Case Search returned HTTP 200 with an empty body on the first route and HTTP 403 on the second. Missouri Case.net returned HTTP 403 on the first and an SSL failure on the second. Connecticut's civil inquiry failed with an SSL handshake error at the robots stage on the first route and served a working party-search form on the second. Indiana MyCase served a page stating that "Electronic access to court information is restricted by federal and state law". Franklin County, Ohio served its search page, which warns that "Efforts to mine large quantities of data from CIO without prior approval ... will be detected and stopped". Pennsylvania's UJS Portal served a name-search form on both routes and it was not submitted. CourtListener's robots.txt, re-read on 2026-09-01, disallows this agent from the whole site apart from a short allow list.

So three of the eight refused a retrieval, and three served a usable search page that was not used. What follows from that is narrower than a wall would license, and it is stated rather than dressed up: state-court covenant litigation involving a collision consolidator is unexamined here, not absent. Nothing read in this pass would confirm or contradict a buyer's own account of its enforcement record.

Who publishes what a seller thinks

The shape of this evidence has to be described first. [REPORTED] Unhappy sellers may be contractually unable to speak. Item 20 of the Maaco Franchise Disclosure Document, filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce, states: "In some instances, current and former franchisees sign provisions restricting their ability to speak openly about their experience with the Maaco Center franchise system. You may wish to speak with current and former franchisees, but be aware that not all such franchisees will be able to communicate with you." That is a franchisor stating in a filing that some of the people best placed to describe the experience are restricted from doing so. It is evidence about franchising, not about consolidator acquisitions, and it is not offered as evidence about them. It establishes that a survey of published seller accounts is a biased instrument, and collecting more does not fix it.

[REPORTED] Now the accounts. Focus Advisors publishes named client testimonials: counted on 2026-09-01, 22 entries naming 26 people, because four name a pair of co-owners. Every one is published by the adviser paid a commission on the deal being praised, so read them as evidence that satisfied sellers exist and will be named, not as a rate. Three entries describe a repeat sale by the same person or family, which is worth more than any endorsement: Brad Pogachefsky, "Having previously sold an MSO without representation, I quickly came to appreciate the value an advisor brings"; Ryan Wilson and Wayne Tate, "As someone who has previously sold a collision repair business, I knew we needed professional assistance"; and Cooper Faassen, whose father "recommended we use him to represent us this time around". People who sell, rebuild and sell again do not behave like people who were harmed.

Now the asymmetry, named rather than hidden. No named seller saying the sale went badly was found in any source in this pass. That is a finding about the retrievable record, not that such sellers do not exist, and the disclosure above gives one documented reason the record would look like this even if they were common. It is also a record with one owner: the largest single body of named seller accounts found here is published by a firm that is paid when the deal closes.

What exists on the other side, in full. [REPORTED] An anonymous account published by a competing buyer: Quality Collision Group's article says "One former owner in Arizona, who sold to a rebranding-focused chain, saw his shop renamed and his staff cut within 90 days. He now calls the deal 'the worst mistake of my career.'" No name, no business, no buyer, no date; it is uncheckable, it is a buyer's statement about competitors, and nothing here rests on it. [ALLEGED] A live contract action: RARBS, LLC and Roy Reynolds v. CollisionRight, LLC, No. 1:26-cv-00348 (S.D. Ind.), removed on 20 February 2026 from Madison County Circuit Court, Indiana, No. 48C01-2601-PL-000002, pleaded as diversity, other contract, with a counterclaim filed, a settlement conference set for 22 September 2026 and trial for 2 November 2027; the complaint was not obtained and nothing is proven against anybody. And friction inside the pro-sale corpus itself: Jeff Middleton and Kevin Parsons of Seattle went "down the road with a couple of prospective buyers on our own over the past two years and were disappointed in the outcome."

Quality Collision Group's page also states that "Over 90% of private equity-backed buyers eliminate original shop names within six months." That is one private-equity-backed buyer's published claim about its competitors, sitting above a block of sources none of which is attached to any figure and one of which is a Reddit thread. At least one competitor's own site cuts against it: CollisionRight states it operates "55+ trusted brands" across "125+ locations" and displays the acquired names. A seller shown that figure can check it by counting signs.

Corrections

• A working note had a Key Collision executive describing the business as "something our customers could rely on". Re-pulled as raw text it reads "something our customers could count on for the long run", and the quotation was dropped.
• A working note put the sale of Joe Hudson's at fifteen months after the Halls sold to it; the interval is about twenty-eight months.
• A working note recorded the Quality Collision Group article as listing twelve sources; a second retrieval counted fourteen, so no count is published. Another recorded 16 CFR Part 436 as carrying five appendices; it carries six.
• A first probe of Minnesota Statutes 181.988 returned the definition of "covenant not to compete" without the nonsolicitation exclusion, which would have cut a true statement. A second targeted probe returned it in full.
• A draft called the operating lease cost the largest reconciling item between Joe Hudson's net loss and its lease-adjusted earnings. Interest expense of 55,575 thousand dollars is larger; the lease cost is the second largest.
• A draft gave 535.5 million dollars as "the" Hart-Scott-Rodino size-of-transaction threshold. That is the level above which a transaction is reportable whatever the size of the parties. The 2026 floor below which no filing is required is 133.9 million dollars.
• 2026-09-01, cross-article audit. The same paragraph said "merger review does not reach an ordinary shop sale". That is a claim about review, and what the thresholds establish is a claim about notification. Section 7A(i)(1) says in terms that a failure to act under the notification section bars nothing under any other law. The sentence now says no premerger notification is owed, states that limit, and links to the page that works the arithmetic.
• A draft printed an adviser's remark about leases without the word "potentially", which is in the source. It is restored, with the sentence it belongs to.
• A draft said the state court systems would not answer. Three of the eight served a working search page to a second retrieval route, and none of the eight was queried; the section now says what was done.
• The Maaco quotations were re-pulled from the Clean Franchise Disclosure Document filed with Minnesota as 35144-202512-04 and string-matched against it. A sibling franchisor's document in the same registry carries the same boilerplate with a different brand name, so the file number is given rather than a search page.

What we could not establish

• Any purchase agreement for the sale of a collision shop. Asset-versus-equity, earn-outs, working-capital pegs, escrows, indemnity caps, rollover equity and seller employment terms are unestablished for every transaction examined. Where a term is not public this article says so rather than describing what such terms usually contain.
• Any direct repair programme agreement, and whether one carries a change-of-control or anti-assignment clause.
• Whether consolidator purchase agreements contain non-disparagement clauses, and the subject matter of RARBS, LLC and Roy Reynolds v. CollisionRight, LLC.
• State-court covenant litigation involving any collision consolidator. Eight portals were fetched and none was queried; that is an unexamined record, not an empty one.
• Whether any antitrust review conditioned the Boyd and Joe Hudson's transaction, and the Small Business Administration's lender rules, SOP 50 10 8.
• Any named seller on the record saying the sale went badly.
• Non-compete law in the forty-eight states not read, and every state plant-closing statute.
• Whether a shop sale in the 133.9 million to 535.5 million dollar band has ever been reported to the antitrust agencies. No filing record was searched.

REJECTED, being material considered and left out rather than softened:

1. A second adviser's quotation disparaging EBITDA multiples; the source page was not re-pulled this pass.
2. Counts of retained brand names across four private-equity-backed buyers; not re-performed here.
3. A retention-bonus term from a live wage complaint: an unproven allegation about employment, not a sale.
4. "In 2024, 450 shops were acquired while more than 800 closed permanently", a buyer's figure with no source attached.
5. Franchise outlet-termination totals: they describe franchise exits, not shop sales.

Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to sell or not to sell. It is a list of what the documents say and where they stop. Put the instrument itself in front of your own lawyer and accountant before signing.

Related

• Who actually signs the agreement with your insurer
• Who owns the body shop you are standing in
• What Boyd's SEC filings say about consolidation, the buyer's own audited accounts

Sources

• Buyers' own pages: https://www.crashchampions.com/partners/sell-your-shop , https://classiccollision.com/join/ , https://www.collisionright.com/ . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Boyd Group Services, acquisition announcement, https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/boyd-group-services-inc-to-acquire-joe-hudson-s-collision-center-a-leading-player-in-the-u-s-southeast-collision-repair-industry-829940352.html , and Form 40-F Exhibit 99.3, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2091467/000119312526112466/d106626dex993.htm , with the rendered acquisition note at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2091467/000119312526112466/R13.htm . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Focus Advisors: https://focusadvisors.com/2026/02/the-gerber-joe-hudsons-deal-is-done/ , https://focusadvisors.com/2026/02/year-in-review-2025-slowdown-and-then-a-blockbuster/ , https://focusadvisors.com/2026/08/focus-advisors-represents-key-collision-in-sale-of-new-england-operations-to-caliber-collision/ , https://focusadvisors.com/our-clients/testimonials/ . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Quality Collision Group: https://www.qualitycollisiongroup.com/sell-your-shop , https://www.qualitycollisiongroup.com/news/from-handshake-to-legacy . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Maaco Franchise Disclosure Document, Minnesota CARDS Clean FDD 35144-202512-04, https://cards.web.commerce.state.mn.us/documents/%7BE051509B-0000-C770-95CD-87E2FB5E9562%7D/download?documentClass=FRANCHISE_REGISTRATIONS&contentSequence=0 ; Order of Cancellation 10915-202607-01, https://cards.web.commerce.state.mn.us/documents/%7BF05FA39F-0000-C9DC-9BBB-D16675E02A46%7D/download?documentClass=FRANCHISE_REGISTRATIONS&contentSequence=0 ; registry search https://cards.web.commerce.state.mn.us/franchise-registrations?doSearch=true&franchisor=Maaco . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Cases: https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2009cv04548/332759/58 , https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/la-court-of-appeal/118274933.html , https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txndce/3:2024cv00986/389064/211/ . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Non-Compete Clause Rule, 89 FR 38342, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-05-07/html/2024-09171.htm ; FTC vacatur notice, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/federal-trade-commission-files-accede-vacatur-non-compete-clause-rule ; eCFR 16 CFR Part 910 (404), https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-J/part-910 , and Part 436 (control), https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-436 . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Statutes and regulations: https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-bpc/division-7/part-2/chapter-1/section-16601/ , https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/181.988 , https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title29-section2101&num=0&edition=prelim , https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-13/chapter-I/part-120/subpart-A/subject-group-ECFR8ea1b2ca9e21b74/section-120.160 , https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/premerger-notification-program/current-thresholds . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Trade press: https://www.autobodynews.com/news/regional-mso-owners-clean-shop-for-sale-to-consolidator (Paul Hughes, 19 September 2024) and https://www.fenderbender.com/running-a-shop/operations/article/55239628/steps-to-take-to-sell-your-collision-repair-business (Todd Kortemeier, 13 December 2024). Read on 2026-09-01.
• Federal dockets: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/indiana/insdce/1:2026cv00348/227768 and https://dockets.justia.com/search?query=%22Crash+Champions%22 . Read on 2026-09-01.
• Court portals: https://wcca.wicourts.gov/ , https://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquirySearch.jis , https://www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/welcome.do , https://civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/PartySearch.aspx , https://public.courts.in.gov/mycase/ , https://fcdcfcjs.co.franklin.oh.us/CaseInformationOnline/ , https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/CaseSearch , https://www.courtlistener.com/robots.txt . Read on 2026-09-01.

General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.

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