Record Fuel Prices Add Hidden Cost to Every Mobile Auto Glass Job in Spring 2022

By mid-April 2022, surging fuel prices were imposing a quiet but compounding cost on auto glass shops that operated mobile service vehicles—a business model that Safelite and most independent competitors rely on to compete for at-home and at-work windshield replacements.

Shop owner Matt Bailey of 20/20 Auto Glass in Greenville, South Carolina estimated in April 2022 that his company was paying $5,000 more per month for gasoline than it had in the prior year—roughly double the per-gallon rate his operation had budgeted for. U.S. Energy Information Administration data show that the national average retail price of regular gasoline peaked above $5.00 per gallon in June 2022.

For shops operating fleets of mobile service vehicles—sprinter vans, pickup trucks, or passenger vehicles—fuel is a variable cost embedded in the price of every mobile job. Unlike materials, where NAGS pricing provides at least a flawed reference point, there is no standard mechanism in most insurer direct-repair agreements to separately account for fuel cost escalation. Shops absorbing higher fuel costs without corresponding reimbursement adjustments saw margin compression on every mobile assignment.

Some operators responded by reducing the radius of their mobile service territory, concentrating work in areas where drive time per job was shorter. Others added a fuel surcharge to retail customers, disclosing it separately. Both approaches had customer experience trade-offs, particularly for shops that had built their reputation on broad mobile coverage.

The fuel cost spike of 2022 accelerated discussions within the industry about route optimization software and fleet electrification as long-term cost mitigation tools. Several national players had already begun piloting electric service vehicles, though the capital cost of fleet transition remained prohibitive for most independent shops during the 2022 spike.

The 2022 fuel cost crisis also prompted some shop owners to revisit the structure of their mobile service pricing models. Shops that had historically offered mobile service at the same price as in-shop service—viewing the convenience factor as a competitive differentiator rather than a billable service—reconsidered whether a separate mobile service fee was justified. Industry associations noted that transparent mobile service fees, clearly disclosed at booking, were legally permissible in most states and were beginning to appear in markets where fuel cost recovery had become urgent.