Measured
What carriers pay for paint and materials
Short-paid materials is one of the loudest arguments in collision repair and one of the least measured. These are the allowances nine carriers printed on their own estimates.
- Sample
- 39 estimates
- across 9 carriers
- Range
- $31.00 to $44.00
- median $36.00 an hour
- Documents dated
- January 2024 to August 2026
- Rates were last confirmed against the documents on 8 August 2026. A carrier can change its rate at any time and will not announce it.
- Source
- Primary documents
- the rate table printed on each carrier estimate
The measured allowances
| Carrier | Allowed | Spread | Estimates | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol West | $31.00 | no variance | 1 | hint only |
| Travelers | $34.00 | no variance | 1 | hint only |
| GEICO | $36.00 | $34.00 to $36.00 | 14 | |
| Kemper / Infinity | $36.00 | $24.00 to $36.00 | 3 | thin |
| State Farm | $36.00 | $36.00 to $40.00 | 7 | thin |
| Allstate | $38.00 | $30.00 to $38.00 | 6 | thin |
| USAA | $38.00 | $36.00 to $38.00 | 4 | thin |
| Auto-Owners | $40.00 | no variance | 1 | hint only |
| Liberty Mutual | $44.00 | no variance | 2 | hint only |
The rate is a median of the readings. Where a carrier repeats the figure on a supplement it is counted once per reading and the estimate count stays honest, which is why some rows show more variance than estimates.
The largest carrier in this corpus does not print the rate
Across 82 Progressive documents, not one prints a paint-supplies rate line. Every other carrier in this corpus prints one, and the same parser reads it off their estimates in both vendor layouts.
That establishes that Progressive does not express this allowance as an hourly rate on the documents measured. It does not establish what Progressive pays for materials, and nothing here should be read as saying so.
The parser was checked rather than assumed. The same two patterns read this figure off 39 estimates from the other nine carriers, in both vendor layouts, so a silent parser failure would have had to be specific to one carrier's documents while succeeding on the same layouts elsewhere.
Against the one national figure anybody cites
The figure quoted in trade coverage is $38 for paint and materials, from a 2020 third-party survey of participants. The median here is $36.00, measured off documents rather than reported by anyone. The two land close together, which is the useful result: it says this corpus is not an outlier, and it adds the thing a single national average cannot give a shop, which is which carrier.
These documents were written predominantly to one Florida shop. Labor rates are regional, so this is a measurement of what these carriers paid on these jobs, not a national average. It is offered as the thing none of the sources above are: a figure read off the carriers’ own settled estimates rather than reported by the party being measured.
Before you ask
Is this what the carrier pays, or what the shop charges?
What the carrier allowed. Every figure is read off the rate table printed on that carrier’s own estimate. Lines matching the shop’s own posted rates are excluded before anything is counted, because shop-authored pages travel inside the same PDFs.
Why is Progressive missing from the table?
Across 82 Progressive documents, not one prints a paint-supplies rate line. Every other carrier in this corpus prints one, and the same parser reads it off their estimates in both vendor layouts. That establishes that Progressive does not express this allowance as an hourly rate on the documents measured. It does not establish what Progressive pays for materials, and nothing here should be read as saying so.
How much does a short-paid materials line cost a shop?
Not published, because it is not measured. Answering it needs materials cost against materials paid on the same repair, and this dataset holds allowances rather than invoices.
Can I use these as a national benchmark?
No. These documents were written predominantly to one Florida shop and labor rates are regional. The one national figure available for comparison is a 2020 survey putting paint and materials at $38.
This is the data the estimator prices against
EstimateLogic Pro writes a first-draft estimate from damage photos and prices it against this corpus rather than a guess at a market rate. An account is set up by hand.