This car-repair chain’s revenue skyrocketed 130x in the past five years—and 83% of its workforce doesn’t have a college degree, including its CEO

The CEO of Crash Champions, who recorded 2.75 billion dollars in the year, came from a small town in Indiana, where he was not a university degree given and no expectation.

“We did not have much from a financial point of view,” he said. luck. “Great professional planning and professional planning was not a discussion in my family.”

Ebert had the spirit of entrepreneurship and began to cut the promoters of people at the age of ten or 11 years. Nevertheless, his real interest in cars was, and he could not wait to open the hood on his first car, change his oil, and take his wheels.

“For me, a car that means freedom,” he remembers. “I still remember the first time I was in a car myself, I am thinking about how to go anywhere I want now.”

But at the age of 16, he broke his first car: Ford Excellence two seats. Not wanting to file a security demand or cancel his insurance, visited a local car reformer and asked him whether he could show Ebert how to fix his car. Reformer’s verb – EBERT was launched in the car repair profession.

Six numbers jobs without a degree

Ebert took a job with the reformer after high school, and thus “literally, by chance” in the industry. It is now overseeing a company that has seen 130X revenue since 2019 and has been operating more than 10,000 people.

Like EBERT, 83 % of the workforce is not a university degree.

He said, “I really did, well in life, I didn’t go to college.” “I am not hostile to the college. I think there are definitely great things for the college. But I also know it is not a chance for everyone.”

EBERT is applying in the curve when it comes to employing people without a four -year certificate. The college was historically seen as a one -way ticket for a profitable profession, but young generations began to join it is not the only way to succeed. Many General Zires take commercial jobs and are not burdened by student loans. In addition, some make more than six numbers to do so.

Ebert said technicians get more than $ 100,000 a year. In the first quarter of 2025, the American Statistical Office reported that the average weekly profit for workers in the country of 120.9 million years in the country amounted to $ 1.194, equivalent to about $ 62,000 annually. This means that the accident champion workers make about 1.6 times the ordinary American factor.

“We consider the college as a reward, not a condition,” Ebert said. Of course, there are some situations that require a specific degree, as he added, such as how its observer and chief legal officials need to scientific grades.

Although university degrees do not need most of its functions, Crash Champions focuses on continuing learning. It has created a driving program that focuses on topics such as culture and retaining, financial and operational leadership, strategic leadership, communication and recognition, continuous learning, as well as mastering the mandate and employment of the team. Thousands of employees participated in these programs.

The accident champion is a way of courtesy

“We can use the best technicians. We can train the best technicians, [but] “If they are working for bad managers, they will leave and go to another place,” Ebert said.

He said that Crash Champions also provides a vocational training program as they can “start technicians from scratch.” They were placed with one of the team members who work with him for a few years, then they are stopped on their own.

Crash heroes growth story

Ebert is attributed to its employees with many of the company’s achievements.

He said: “The key to my success was surrounding myself with better people, people more intelligent than me, and the people who did things I did not do.”

However, Ebert was the mastermind of the company. After high school, he moved to the outskirts of Chicago and stayed with his grandparents for a few years and got a job in a store for sale. At that time, he still wanted to start his own work, but “being a young child did not know anyone”, and he said he would be a challenge, and he said that the start of his private store “had ended a little [his] head.”

With the spirit of the initiative, though, Ebert searched in different businesses, and eventually opened its own concession by the financial metro by $ 100,000 on credit cards. Although this first site did not earn any money, he decided to open “thinking that it would be the way to earn money.”

But he was wrong. This one did not earn money either. Therefore, he returned to his re -lighting roots, approached a local car reformer, and opened a group of body together in 1999, when Ebert was twenty -six years old. His partner retired from the work, which was 20 years old, in 2014, and sold works to Ebelt in 2014.

That became the beginning of the Crash heroes, which was first called Lennox, a town in Illinois. Ebert changed his name to heroes, which arises from the idea that Venice is a hero at the time of the customer’s need after an accident.

“I wanted to make the stores nice, destroy some of these stereotypes, and make them a place that people want to attend, a place that people want to work,” I explained.

The accident champion is a way of courtesy

After taking over the business, Ebert knew that he wanted to expand, and gained a struggling body – which was quick to buy the third and fourth sites of the company, all in almost a year.

At that time, Ebelt was still using small business administration financing, and “somewhat mainly grew” in the Chicago region. He wanted to get more stores, but he could not finance SBA, so he worked with an investment banker who suggested private stocks as an alternative to debt. Ebelt was initially hesitant to do so, but the recognized industry trends like technical developments in vehicle repair require more capital. Covid-19 was forced to shift in the strategy, but Ebert also saw a need for his business model at the national level.

The great growth of Crash Champions came in 2021. Service King Colison, another large company to repair auto bodies, has grown very quickly and made bad commercial decisions, which led to a financial problem. The debt was coming in 2022 and was not able to pay. It is likely that it takes the company’s bond holders, especially Clearlake Capital, until Clearlake calls the King’s Business service with Crash Champions to expand his business.

They turned to 330 sites from 650 sites for Crash Champions, and the company saw its revenues increased from 327.1 million dollars of revenue in 2021 to $ 2.1 billion in 2022. For this year, it expects about 3 billion dollars and plans a “slope of” [up] Growth next year.

“I do not want to stop until we are first. We are the third biggest in the country today,” said Ebert, referring to the caliber collision and Gerber Colison & Glass. “There is a lot of growth in front of the company. We have slowed a little here in the past year or two, because we have grown very quickly, and we wanted to be more sophisticated and more willing to be greater.”