Service Bay Population Blowout
The service bay populations of the seven major types of light vehicle repair outlets are undergoing significant realignments, reflecting brutally competitive market trends and the lingering knock-on effects of COVID-19.
Since 2019, the year before the onslaught of the pandemic, more changes have surged across the service bay populations of the nation’s leading types of repair outlets than since the beginning of the new millennium.
The changing bay populations are disrupting the market shares of major types of repair outlets, the product volume flowing through the five major distribution channels and the brands of products installed by technicians on cars and light trucks, among other key aftermarket dynamics.
Fewer Bays Face Surging Repair Volume
Over the past six years (2019 to 2025), more than 11 million cars and light trucks have been added to the U.S. vehicle population. At the same time, the light vehicle bay count has been shrinking.
To compound the service bay challenges, newer vehicles are significantly more mechanically complex than they were just a few years ago. Consequently, fewer service bays must somehow handle a growing number of vehicles that require increasingly complex repairs.
Bay Count Changes by Repair Outlets
At mid-year 2025, there were approximately 1.09 million car and light truck service bays across the U.S., down six percent from 2019.
Four of the seven major repair outlet types have suffered significant bay losses, while the other three have only marginally increased their bay counts since 2019.
These changes in the number and distribution of the DIFM market’s service bays are greater than at any time since the beginning of the new millennium.
Service Stations and Garages
COVID-19 hit service stations and garages particularly hard. Lang Marketing estimates that the pandemic accelerated their bay loss, a trend that had been underway for several years. Amid a seismic shift in the repair market, service stations and garages lost over 14 percent of their bays between 2019 and 2025.
Vehicle Dealers
The Great Recession of 2008 cut a wide swath through the dealer population, and more than 3,000 dealers closed over the next three years.
While the number of vehicle dealers stabilized in the U.S. between 2017 and 2019, the onslaught of COVID-19 reduced their bay count in 2020.
Nevertheless, dealers expanded their bay populations during the aftermarket recovery beginning in 2021, and by 2025, they were operating 3,000 more service bays than in 2019.
Three More Groups of Repair Outlets Lose Bays
Tire stores, discount stores/mass merchandisers with bays, and retail auto parts stores with bays declined in their service-bay populations between 2019 and 2025.
There were approximately 12,000 fewer tire store bays at mid-year 2025 than six years earlier.
COVID-19 also rocked discount stores/mass merchandisers with bays, and their bay count fell by more than 11,000 between 2019 and 2025.
Retail auto parts stores with bays have been in decline for the past 10 years. As a result, they lost more than 8,000 bays between 2019 and 2025.
Only Two Independent Repair Outlets Add Bays
Only two types of independent (non-dealer) repair outlets increased their service bay populations between 2019 and 2025: repair specialists and foreign specialists.
While these two outlets each suffered bay losses during 2020 due to COVID-19, their service bay recovery beginning in 2021 offset the pandemic’s impact on their bay populations.
Repair specialists expanded their bay count by approximately 3,000 between 2019 and 2025, and foreign specialists added about 7,000 bays over these six years.
Independent Repair Outlets Lose Bay Share
Independent (non-dealer) outlets saw their share of total light vehicle service bays decline from 74 percent in 2019 to less than 72 percent in 2025. This reversed a trend of expanding independent bay share strength following the Great Recession of 2008.
This has important consequences for the DIFM share of major repair-outlet types, the volume of products moving through the five major distribution channels supplying the light-vehicle aftermarket and the product brands technicians install on cars and light trucks.
Lang Marketing expects that the current trends in service bay population realignments will continue through the end of the decade, generating significant consequences for many aspects of the light-vehicle aftermarket.
Six Major Takeaways
• The nation’s VIO and its light-vehicle service bay population are moving in opposite directions. Between 2019 and 2025, more than 11 million cars and light trucks were added to the nation’s VIO, as the light-vehicle bay population shrank by more than six percent.
• Services stations and garages were hit hard by COVID-19, suffering the largest bay losses among the major outlet groups. Lang Marketing estimates that more than 14 percent of its bays were shuttered between 2019 and 2026.
• Although dealers increased their service bay population between 2017 and 2019, they suffered a loss of several hundred bays in 2020. Nevertheless, the strong dealer rebound from 2021 to 2025 pushed their bay count to 3,000 above 2019 levels.
• Four independent (non-dealer) repair outlet groups lost service bays between 2019 and 2026: Service stations and garages, tire stores, discount stores/mass merchandisers with bays, and retail auto parts stores with bays. Their combined bay losses topped a staggering 75,000.
• Foreign specialists and repair specialists were the only independent (non-dealer) outlet groups to expand their bay counts over these six years. Foreign specialists added about 7,000 light-vehicle service bays between 2019 and 2025, and repair specialists added 3,000.
• The independent (non-dealer) repair outlet share of DIFM service bays fell from 74 percent during 2019 to less than 72 percent at mid-year 2025. These service bay population changes significantly affected the DIFM market share of major repair outlet types, product volume across the five major distribution channels, and the brands of products installed by technicians, among other aftermarket dynamics.
See the 2027 Lang Aftermarket Annual for a complete analysis of the dramatically changing service bay population across the country. Over 95 percent of the Lang Annual’s 316 pages present information and analysis found nowhere else. The Table of Contents can be viewed here: bit.ly/LangAftermarketAnnualTOC. A link to the Order Form is available at bit.ly/2027LangAftermarketAnnualOrderForm.
Want more? Check out the August 2026 issue of AASP-MN News!