How are labor hours worked out when there is no published time for the operation?

From measurement of the damaged area, the construction the unit uses, and comparable jobs finished here on the same build type. The basis is then written on the line itself. Hours with a stated method behind them survive carrier review. Hours that arrive with no explanation are the first thing an adjuster reduces.

Will you write a scope for repairs I intend to have done somewhere else?

Yes, and a good number of ours are used that way. The fee is $150, the document is yours, and how you use it is your business. Owners take them to carriers, to private sellers and to attorneys. If you do later authorize the repair here, that fee credits in full against the invoice.

What does a line marked teardown dependent mean on my scope?

It means the operation cannot be priced firmly until something comes apart, and it names the question teardown will answer. Bonded RV walls and wet floors hide their extent by design. Declaring the unknown up front is what turns a later supplement into paperwork rather than a dispute about what changed.

Why are paint and body materials listed apart from labor?

Because they are calculated from the hours they attach to, at $55 per paint hour and $5 per body hour, and because hiding them inside a labor rate makes two estimates impossible to compare. Sales tax applies to parts and materials at 7.75 percent while labor is not taxed, which is another reason to keep them apart.

How long does a written repair estimate stay usable?

The labor structure holds. Parts prices and lead times are the part that moves, sometimes sharply, so anything more than about sixty days old gets its parts lines refreshed before authorization. We do that without charging the fee again, because the inspection and the operations are already documented.

Can the scope go straight to my adjuster with the photographs attached?

Yes, and that is the usual route. It goes out with the photographic sequence, any moisture readings by location, and the measurement printout where structure is involved. Adjusters approve what they can verify, so sending the evidence with the original scope rather than holding it back shortens review noticeably.

Inspection and Estimating

The Written Repair Estimate: What Is On It, What It Costs

Written by Claims Coordinator, Insurance Claims Coordinator, OCRV Center. Reviewed by Structural Repair Lead

In shortA written repair estimate is $150 and it credits in full against an authorized repair. It is a line by line scope, produced in shop only, never from a photograph.

What is a written repair estimate and what does it cost?

A written repair estimate from OCRV Center is a line by line repair scope listing labor hours at the department rate, parts, materials and work sequence. It costs $150 and credits in full against an authorized repair. It is produced in shop in Yorba Linda for Rancho Santa Margarita owners.

The fee is $150 and it comes off an authorized repair invoice in full
We do not write scopes from photographs or from a phone description
Labor appears as hours at a department rate, never as a lump sum
You keep the document whether or not you proceed with the work

Estimate fee: $150Credited in full against an authorized repair at this facility
Where it is written: 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba LindaThe unit is present, on a lift where the scope needs one
Body and paint rate: $210 per hourPlus paint supplies at $55 per paint hour
Mechanical and electrical rate: $260 per hourUsed for systems, plumbing, chassis and appliance lines
Typical turnaround: Same day on most unitsLonger where a supplier has to confirm availability

Last verified July 29, 2026

The unit has to be here. We do not offer mobile estimating, and there is no roadside version of this document, because a scope written without the vehicle in front of somebody is a guess dressed up in line items. Half of what belongs on an RV estimate is under the coach, behind a panel or only visible with a meter attached, and none of that reaches a phone camera.

What you are buying for $150 is the arithmetic. Which operations are needed, in what order, at how many hours, on which department's rate, with which parts and what those parts are actually doing at a supplier this week. Owners use it to authorize work, to answer a carrier, to negotiate with a seller, or to decide that a twenty year old coach has reached the end of sensible investment. All four are legitimate and none of them require you to spend another dollar here.

Why a scope cannot be written without the vehicle

We do not offer mobile estimating, and there is no roadside option: the unit comes to the Yorba Linda facility where the lift capacity, the paint booth and the measuring system are. That is a capability statement rather than a preference. A collision scope needs the coach on a lift to establish whether a frame member moved. A water scope needs a pin meter run along a floor line. A slide scope needs the room cycled. None of those is a photograph.

The practical cost of a scope written remotely is not a slightly wrong number, it is a supplement fight two weeks in. A carrier who has approved a figure and then receives a much larger one asks, reasonably, what changed. If the answer is that nobody looked properly the first time, the second conversation is difficult. If the answer is that the teardown line everybody authorized found what it was authorized to look for, the second conversation is administrative.

Note

Insurance walk ins are accepted during posted hours. Bring the unit, your claim number and anything already written by anybody else, including a carrier estimate you disagree with.

our position on work that would have to travel

Where the hours on an RV estimate come from

Automotive collision work runs on published labor times. A quarter panel on a common sedan has a number, and both sides of a claim work from the same book. Recreational vehicle work mostly does not have that. Volumes are small, construction varies between two units built in the same month, and there is no comprehensive published time for replacing a laminated sidewall section on a nine year old fifth wheel.

So hours have to be derived and then justified. We derive them from three things: measurement of the actual damaged area, the construction the unit uses, and comparable jobs completed here on the same build type. Then the basis goes on the line, in writing. An adjuster reviewing forty hours with a measurement sheet and a comparable behind it has something to verify. An adjuster reviewing forty hours with nothing behind it has a number to reduce, and reducing it is the rational thing to do from where they sit.

Measured area and construction type drive the hour count
Comparable completed jobs on the same build provide the sanity check
The basis for the hours is written on the line, not held in someone's head
Department rate is stated per line so a mixed scope stays legible
Refinish hours are separated from body hours because materials attach to them

What the document actually contains

An estimate that is useful to somebody who was not present has a fixed anatomy. Vehicle identification, including the plate or serial and the hour meters where they exist. A damage description written as observation rather than conclusion. Then the operations, one per line, each with a department, an hour figure, a basis and the sequence position it occupies. Then parts, with supplier, price, markup and lead time. Then materials, calculated from the hours they attach to. Then sublet, shown as itself.

The last section is the one owners skip and adjusters read first: what is provisional. Any line that cannot be settled until something comes apart is identified there, along with the specific question teardown will answer. Sales tax of 7.75 percent applies to parts and materials, labor is not taxed, and where a total crosses $2,000 a deposit is taken at authorization. All of that appears on the face of the document rather than in a conversation afterwards.

The sections of a written repair estimate and what each one is for
Section	What it contains	Who relies on it
Identification	Serial or plate, hour meters, date, mileage	Anybody reading the file months later
Observation	Damage described as seen, with photograph references	The adjuster deciding cause of loss
Operations	One line each: department, hours, basis, sequence	You, when comparing two estimates
Parts	Supplier, price, markup, lead time, long lead flags	The scheduler, and your own calendar
Materials	Paint and body supplies calculated from their hours	Whoever checks that the total adds up
Provisional	Teardown dependent lines and the questions behind them	The supplement reviewer

Using the estimate somewhere other than here

A large share of the estimates we write are never followed by a repair in this building, and that is fine. Owners take them to a carrier to challenge a low figure. Buyers take them to a private seller with a specific number attached to a specific defect, which converts a vague haggle into a short conversation. Sellers order one so they can answer a buyer's questions before they get asked. People deciding whether to keep an older coach use it to turn a feeling into arithmetic.

None of that changes the price and none of it changes how the document is written. The fee is charged when the work is done and the paper is yours. If you never come back, you paid $150 for an independent scope written by people who put the unit on a lift. If you authorize repairs here, that same $150 comes off the invoice as a line item and you have effectively paid for it once.

When an estimate is the wrong purchase

An estimate prices a known repair. If nobody yet knows why something is failing, pricing it is guesswork with a decimal point. A slide that stalls could be a rail, a gear pack, a controller or a supply voltage problem, and those four repairs are thousands of dollars apart. Writing an estimate for one of them before establishing which is true is how owners end up authorizing the wrong work and paying twice for the privilege.

In that situation the sequence is diagnosis first, then a scope written against the finding. Diagnostic and scan time bills at $285 per hour with a one hour minimum, and it credits in full against an authorized repair exactly as the estimate fee does. We will say plainly at the counter which of the two your question needs, and being told costs nothing.

buying instrument time before pricing a repair

How to compare this against somebody else's number

Totals are the least informative part of an estimate and comparing them is how owners get misled. Two documents for the same damage can differ by half without either being dishonest, because they assumed different things. One replaced a panel and one repaired it. One included teardown and one did not. One priced OEM parts and one priced aftermarket. One folded materials into labor so the line looks cheaper than it is.

So read the operations instead. Count the hours per operation and ask what the basis was. Check whether refinish sits separately from body. Look for a teardown allowance anywhere bonded structure is involved, and treat its absence as a warning rather than a saving. Where a competing document is shorter than ours, we will go through the difference operation by operation and tell you honestly which of the two assumptions we think is right.

Line up the operations, ignoring both totals to start with
Compare hours per operation and ask for the basis on each
Check whether materials appear separately or inside the labor rate
Look for a teardown allowance anywhere bonded construction is involved
Confirm whether parts are OEM, aftermarket or unspecified
Only then compare the two totals, with the differences named

Which vehicles we write these for

Gas coaches and travel trailers make up most of the volume, usually behind an insurance claim. Fifth wheels arrive with pin box and frame questions where the hour count depends entirely on measurement. Vintage units need an estimate that separates what is still supported from what has to be fabricated, because that distinction decides whether a restoration is sensible at all. Sprinter based builds and box trucks come in on the commercial side, where the operator wants downtime days on the document alongside the money.

Scope

What is included

The unit inspected with the scope in hand: Panels are opened where opening them is cheap and informative, and the coach goes on a lift wherever the scope reaches structure, tanks or suspension.
Labor split by department and by rate: Body and paint hours at $210, mechanical and electrical at $260, detail at $95. One line per operation, so you can see what each piece of the job costs.
Materials shown as their own lines: Paint supplies at $55 per paint hour and body supplies at $5 per body hour appear separately rather than being absorbed into a labor rate.
Parts with markup, tax and availability stated: Markup and the 7.75 percent tax on parts and materials are visible. Labor is not taxed. Long lead items are flagged on the face of the document.
Sequence and dependency notes: Operations are listed in the order they have to happen, with any line that cannot be firmed up until teardown identified as exactly that.
A copy in a format your carrier can work fromwhere applicable: Sent to your adjuster on request, with photographs and measurement sheets attached rather than described.

Process

How the work runs

Say what the estimate is for
15 minutes
Authorizing a repair, answering a carrier, negotiating a purchase and deciding whether to keep a unit produce different documents from the same inspection. Telling us the purpose at the counter changes what gets priced and how much detail each line carries.
Inspect with the scope open
1 to 3 hours
Damage is walked, photographed and measured while the lines are being written rather than reconstructed from memory afterwards. Where a lift, a meter or a measuring system is needed to establish an operation, it gets used at this point.
Price the operations, not the impression
1 to 2 hours
Every line gets an operation, a department, an hour count and a basis. Parts get a real supplier price and a real lead time. Materials are calculated from the hours they attach to rather than added as a percentage nobody can audit.
Separate firm from provisional in writing
30 minutes
Anything that cannot be known until a panel comes off is labelled teardown dependent, with the question it will answer stated. That labelling is the single thing that keeps a later supplement procedural instead of adversarial.
Walk the document line by line
30 to 45 minutes
We read it with you, explain where each hour figure came from, and mark what you want removed. Owners frequently authorize part of a scope and defer the rest, so it is written such that splitting it does not require rewriting it.

Cost

What this costs

$150 to $150

1 to 2 labor hours at $285 per hour, diagnostics, scan and programming.

The fee is $150 regardless of unit size, and it credits in full against an authorized repair at this facility.
Where the cause of a fault is unknown, diagnostic time is billed separately at $285 per hour with a one hour minimum.
An estimate that requires teardown to complete is quoted with the teardown as its own authorized line.

How estimating is billed

Written repair estimate: $150, credited in full against an authorized repair.
In depth diagnostic, scan and programming: $285 per hour, one hour minimum, credited in full against an authorized repair.
In shop pre purchase inspection: $400 to $1,200 depending on unit size and systems count.
Insurance walk ins are accepted during posted hours. All inspection and estimating work is performed in shop at the Yorba Linda facility.

Symptoms

What you will notice first

You have a claim number and no clear idea what the repair actually involves
A carrier figure arrived and the total looks unrelated to the damage you can see
Another shop quoted a number over the phone and will not put it in writing
You are deciding whether to repair an older unit or sell it as it stands
A seller has agreed to a price reduction and you need a figure to justify it
You need a document a lender, a lienholder or an attorney can actually read
Work has already started somewhere else and nobody wrote down the original scope

Failure modes

How this fails, and what we do about it

Failure mode, diagnosis and repair
Failure mode	How we diagnose it	The fix
An estimate written before teardown on bonded construction	The scope contains no exploratory allowance and no note about what is unknown. On a laminated sidewall or a wet floor the visible damage is almost never the whole finding, so the estimate reads as complete when it is provisional.	Write the known operations at firm hours, then state the teardown allowance and the specific question it answers as its own line. An adjuster approves a declared unknown far more readily than a surprise.
Labor hours with no basis anybody can check	A line says forty hours and nothing explains where forty came from. RV work often has no published labor time, so hours that arrive without measurement, comparison or a stated method are the first thing a carrier reduces.	Derive hours from measurement and from comparable jobs on the same construction, then write the basis on the line. Hours with a method behind them survive review. Hours without one get cut.
Parts priced without confirming availability	The estimate looks tidy and the schedule collapses in week two. Rotomoulded tanks, slide rails and unit specific fibreglass caps are the usual offenders, and nobody holds any of them in depth.	Confirm lead time before the number leaves the building and mark long lead items on the face of the estimate, so the calendar in your head matches the calendar in ours.

Causes

Why it happened

A scope written from photographs, which reliably misses the damage behind the first surface and produces a supplement fight later
Labor entered as a lump sum, so nobody can tell whether twelve hours or thirty were assumed for the same operation
Parts listed without checking availability, which turns an eight day estimate into a five week repair when a Lippert component is on allocation
Operations sequenced wrongly, so a refinish line sits ahead of the structural line that will disturb it
Materials folded into labor, which hides the paint supply and body supply lines and makes two estimates impossible to compare
No teardown allowance on bonded construction, where the visible damage is routinely the smaller part of the finding

Parts

Parts and brands we work with

Lippert, Dometic, Suburban, Norcold and Carefree parts priced from current supplier availability rather than a stale catalogue
Dicor and Eternabond roofing materials quoted by coverage rather than estimated by eye
Car-O-Liner Vision X3 measurement data, which is what justifies a structural labor line to an adjuster
Delmhorst pin meter readings recorded by location and attached to any line involving wet decking or panel
Sika and 3M structural adhesive systems, priced as materials against bonded panel operations
Sublet quotations from chassis, glass and upholstery vendors, shown as their own lines rather than buried in labor

Caution

What not to try yourself

Authorizing work against a verbal number. A figure nobody wrote down cannot be compared, cannot be sent to a carrier and cannot be held to.
Accepting an estimate with a single labor line for the whole job. You are entitled to know how many hours were assumed for each operation and at which rate.
Letting anybody begin teardown before the pre teardown condition is documented. Once the panels are in a bin, the original state of the vehicle is an argument rather than a record.
Comparing two estimates by their totals. Different assumptions about parts, materials and teardown produce wildly different totals for identical work.

Vehicles

Which vehicles we do this on

Class A GasClass A gas motorhome repair covers the molded front and rear caps, the vacuum bonded laminated sidewalls, the EPDM roof and the F53 chassis underneath Travel TrailerTravel trailer repair covers A frame tongue welds, the front cap that takes road debris, the roof front radius seam, sidewall delamination starting at a window corner, and equalizer and axle wear StandardStandard fifth wheel repair concentrates on the pin box and upper deck welds, the floor at the step up transition, the front cap above the pin and the roof front radius seam Vintage and ClassicVintage coach work means riveted aluminum or stick and tin construction over timber or steel framing, bedded in butyl rather than bonded SprinterSprinter van collision repair covers the unitized steel shell, the rear and sliding door openings, the roof structure and the upfit that hangs off all of it Box TruckBox truck body repair covers roll up doors and their tracks, rear frames and liftgate mounts, sheet and post sidewalls, hardwood floors over steel crossmembers and the subframe holding the body to the chassis

Technician note

The line owners find most useful is usually the one that says we do not know yet. People expect an estimator to project confidence, and on bonded RV construction that confidence is frequently fiction: I cannot tell you how far a wet floor runs until the flooring is up, and pretending otherwise just moves the bad news to week three. So I write the firm operations firmly, I write the unknown as an unknown with the question attached, and I put the moisture readings and the measuring printout in the file. Adjusters approve declared unknowns. What they fight is a number that changed without an explanation.
Claims Coordinator, Insurance Claims Coordinator, OCRV Center

Appendix

Appendix: questions and answers

How are labor hours worked out when there is no published time for the operation?: From measurement of the damaged area, the construction the unit uses, and comparable jobs finished here on the same build type. The basis is then written on the line itself. Hours with a stated method behind them survive carrier review. Hours that arrive with no explanation are the first thing an adjuster reduces.
Will you write a scope for repairs I intend to have done somewhere else?: Yes, and a good number of ours are used that way. The fee is $150, the document is yours, and how you use it is your business. Owners take them to carriers, to private sellers and to attorneys. If you do later authorize the repair here, that fee credits in full against the invoice.
What does a line marked teardown dependent mean on my scope?: It means the operation cannot be priced firmly until something comes apart, and it names the question teardown will answer. Bonded RV walls and wet floors hide their extent by design. Declaring the unknown up front is what turns a later supplement into paperwork rather than a dispute about what changed.
Why are paint and body materials listed apart from labor?: Because they are calculated from the hours they attach to, at $55 per paint hour and $5 per body hour, and because hiding them inside a labor rate makes two estimates impossible to compare. Sales tax applies to parts and materials at 7.75 percent while labor is not taxed, which is another reason to keep them apart.
How long does a written repair estimate stay usable?: The labor structure holds. Parts prices and lead times are the part that moves, sometimes sharply, so anything more than about sixty days old gets its parts lines refreshed before authorization. We do that without charging the fee again, because the inspection and the operations are already documented.
Can the scope go straight to my adjuster with the photographs attached?: Yes, and that is the usual route. It goes out with the photographic sequence, any moisture readings by location, and the measurement printout where structure is involved. Adjusters approve what they can verify, so sending the evidence with the original scope rather than holding it back shortens review noticeably.

Next step

Open a file on this repair

Tell us the vehicle, what happened and whether a claim is open. We will tell you what the scope looks like and what it takes to get you back on the road.

Request a Quote

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