All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance (U.S.) — NAICS 811198

A Histometrics industry primer for public-market and private investors.

1. Overview

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 811198, "All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance," is the catch-all bucket of the U.S. (United States) car-repair economy. It collects the automotive services that keep a vehicle running and protected but do not fit the larger, named categories. Its defining activities, per the Census Bureau, are automotive air-conditioning (A/C) repair, tire repair other than retreading, and rustproofing and undercoating. As a residual code it also absorbs services with no dedicated home of their own — standalone emissions/safety inspection and appearance-protection work such as paint protection film (PPF) and ceramic coating. [4]

This is a recurring, labor-intensive, mostly local service business. Demand is supported by how old the vehicle fleet is, how far people drive, the weather, and the cost of replacing a car versus keeping it. Returns are constrained by technician availability, local competition, inventory, rent, insurance, and execution. It is also one of the most fragmented industries in the economy — dominated by tiny shops and one-person operators.

Public vs. private ways in. There is no clean, U.S.-listed pure play whose revenue is mostly NAICS 811198. Public investors get indirect exposure two ways: through the broad repair and tire-service chains that perform some of this work inside a wider book (Monro, Driven Brands, the big tire makers' retail arms), and through the film-and-coating suppliers that arm the appearance-protection shops (XPEL and diversified materials makers). The real ownership of the industry is private — national franchises (Ziebart, Tint World), private-equity roll-ups (Mavis, Sun Auto), and thousands of independent and mobile operators. This is primarily a private-investor and small-business industry with a thin public overlay.

2. What it is, and how it's structured

Census scope. NAICS 811198 covers establishments "primarily engaged in providing automotive repair and maintenance services (except mechanical and electrical repair and maintenance; body, paint, interior, and glass repair; motor oil change and lubrication; and car washing)" for passenger cars, trucks, vans, and trailers. Its illustrative examples are automotive air-conditioning repair shops, automotive tire repair (except retreading) shops, and automotive rustproofing and undercoating shops. [4]

What it explicitly excludes (and where those activities go instead, in 2022 NAICS). This matters, because the "automotive repair" universe is split across many codes and 811198 is only the residual sliver: [4]

Two of these exclusions are worth flagging because they are commonly miscoded: auto detailing and waxing are car-washing (811192), not 811198, and automotive glass tinting is 811122. Appearance-protection services that lack a dedicated code — paint protection film and ceramic coating — do fall into 811198 as residual work, but they are a sub-segment of the code, not its core. In 2022 NAICS the older mechanical codes 811112 (exhaust), 811113 (transmission), and 811118 (other mechanical/electrical) were merged into 811114, "Specialized Automotive Repair." [4]

Because a single company can operate across several of these codes, a public company's reported revenue will rarely match its 811198 activity.

Ownership mix. The employer side is made of very small shops — an average of about four employees per establishment (22,057 employees across 5,368 establishments in 2023). [1] Layered on top is a franchise tier (Ziebart in rustproofing/undercoating; Tint World in film and appearance work; coating brands such as Ceramic Pro and Gtechniq that license a name and certify installers) and a regional-platform tier (Mavis, Sun Auto). Underneath it all is a huge base of sole proprietors and mobile operators who own a few thousand dollars of gear and a van.

3. How big it is

Our ground-truth federal figures (employer businesses only). Note the vintage difference: establishment, employment, and payroll figures are 2023 County Business Patterns (CBP); firm, receipts, and concentration figures are the 2022 Economic Census — they are not a single-year dataset. [1][2]

That works out to roughly $726,000 of revenue per firm and about $49,000 of average annual pay per worker — the profile of a small, labor-intensive local service business. [1][2] Because the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) threshold for "small" in this industry is $10 million in receipts, and the average firm books well under $1 million, effectively the entire industry is a small business. (The $10 million figure is a federal-contracting eligibility threshold, not an estimate of typical shop revenue.) [2][3]

The undercount caveat is large here. These federal numbers count only employer firms. County Business Patterns excludes the self-employed, businesses with no employees, and businesses operating without an employer identification number. [5] This residual category is unusually heavy in nonemployer operators — mobile tire-repair and rustproofing services, one-person appearance-protection installers — who have no payroll and never appear in CBP. The Census Bureau's separate Nonemployer Statistics program covers these businesses, but our ground-truth file does not include their count or receipts for this code, so we do not state one. [6] Broader third-party estimates that fold in nonemployers run materially higher — research firm IBISWorld sizes the 811198 industry at roughly $13 billion — though external market-sizing scopes differ and should be read as an order-of-magnitude complement to, not a replacement for, the measured federal floor. [7] Treat the $3.25 billion as the measured employer floor, not the whole market.

The federal file does not provide industry margins, capital expenditure, capacity utilization, labor-versus-parts mix, same-store sales, growth rates, or nonemployer receipts; where this primer discusses those, it draws on company disclosures and named third-party sources, not the ground-truth set. [1][2]

4. The investable universe

No listed company is a pure NAICS 811198 operator. Public exposure comes through two lenses, and the real service businesses sit in private hands.

Lens 1 — broad repair & tire-service chains that perform 811198-type work (A/C repair, tire repair, rustproofing) inside a wider book:

Lens 2 — appearance-protection suppliers that arm the PPF/ceramic-coating shops which also get coded to 811198:

For public investors, XPEL is the only stock where an 811198-adjacent theme is the whole story [17]; the tire makers and materials companies are diversified names for which this industry is a rounding error. Parts distributors such as AutoZone, O'Reilly Automotive, and Genuine Parts Company are important suppliers to these shops but are not direct repair operators.

Major private platforms and owners — where most of the money in this industry actually is:

Ziebart is the cleanest private illustration of the code, because rustproofing and undercoating are a defining 811198 activity rather than an adjacency. [32]

5. How the money works

Owners here make money on labor and materials markup, not on big fixed assets. A typical shop earns from some mix of technician labor; tires and installed parts; A/C diagnosis, refrigerant recovery, repair, and recharge; tire repair; rustproofing/undercoating products and labor; fleet or commercial accounts; and, where applicable, franchise royalties. The economic levers that matter in this specific industry:

• Service-bay throughput. Revenue is capped by how many billable hours a technician produces and how many bays stay full. Average repair order, labor rate, parts availability, and repeat visits are the core operating metrics.
• Attach and mix (the appearance sub-segment). A basic protection job is modest; a full paint-protection-film or ceramic-coating package runs into the thousands. The profit story is upselling — attach rate on premium film and coating work is the single biggest swing factor for shops that offer it.
• Material and inventory margin. Film and coating chemicals, or tire and parts inventory, are the main variable costs. Buying power (franchise or brand programs) and low waste on expensive film separate a healthy shop from a break-even one; tire businesses add inventory turns and procurement economics.
• Recurring revenue and warranties. Coating "maintenance" plans, annual re-applications, multi-year warranties, and fleet accounts turn one-time jobs into relationships and smooth the lumpy, discretionary demand.
• Seasonality. Rustproofing and undercoating peak before winter in the Snow Belt; A/C work peaks in summer heat; appearance and pre-sale prep skew to spring/summer. Cash flow is uneven across the year.
• Franchisor / supplier economics. For a Ziebart or Tint World, the money is royalty and supply streams off franchisee revenue — capital-light and higher-margin than owning shops. For a supplier like XPEL, it is film volume and gross margin (about 42% in 2024) plus attach of coatings and software. [17]

Because barriers to entry are so low — a mobile operator can start with a few thousand dollars of gear — undifferentiated shops face constant price competition, and durable profit comes from brand, certification, warranty, fleet relationships, and the premium (coating/PPF) end of the menu rather than commodity work. The federal file does not disclose store-level margins, capital expenditure, or utilization; investors have to build those from company filings or private diligence. [1][2]

6. What drives demand

• Fleet age. The average U.S. light vehicle hit a record 12.8 years old in 2025, with about 289 million vehicles in operation. Older, kept-longer vehicles mean more repair, protection, and maintenance work — a structural tailwind, though owners may defer nonessential jobs. [9]
• Miles driven. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) recorded 3.29 trillion vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) in 2024, up from 3.25 trillion in 2023. More driving means more tire wear, A/C use, and repair exposure. [10]
• Vehicle replacement economics. When new and used cars are expensive, owners are more willing to repair and protect what they already own — filming a new SUV, rustproofing a truck they plan to keep a decade — though it can also raise price sensitivity.
• Weather and geography. Heat drives A/C repair; road salt and moisture drive rustproofing and undercoating in the Northeast and Midwest; these are local rather than national drivers.
• Enthusiast culture and social media. Ceramic coating and paint protection film moved from niche to mainstream partly through YouTube and Instagram; market researchers put this sub-segment's growth in the high-single to low-double digits. [8]
• Electric vehicles (EVs) — mixed. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) notes all-electric vehicles generally need less maintenance (fewer fluids and moving parts, less brake wear), a headwind for oil-change and mechanical peers. But tires, alignment, climate-control systems, and appearance protection remain relevant, and EV owners — buying expensive, image-conscious vehicles — are strong buyers of film and coatings. For 811198 specifically, EV growth changes the service mix more than it threatens the need. [11]
• Fleet and commercial demand. Commercial users value uptime and standardized service, favoring larger networks with geographic coverage and centralized purchasing.
• Discretionary income. Appearance and protection work is deferrable; in a downturn a full ceramic package is one of the first things a household skips.

7. Regulation

There is no federal license to detail, film, or rustproof a car, so most oversight is a patchwork of state and local rules — with one important federal exception tied to A/C repair:

• Motor-vehicle air conditioning (the most code-specific federal rule). Under Section 609 of the Clean Air Act (CAA), technicians who service a motor-vehicle A/C system (MVAC) for pay must be trained and certified through an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved program, use approved refrigerant-handling equipment, avoid intentional venting, and meet equipment and recordkeeping rules. [12]
• Scrap-tire management. Storage, transport, manifests, disposal fees, hauler licensing, and recycling of used tires are governed mainly by state and local rules. [13]
• Worker safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulates tire mounting and inflation, lifts, compressed air, chemicals, and vehicle movement; it specifically warns of serious injuries from servicing mismatched tires and rims. [14]
• Warranty law. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which generally bars manufacturers from voiding a warranty simply because an owner used an independent shop or non-branded part — though a warranty can still exclude damage caused by improper repair. [15]
• Environmental compliance for coatings and undercoating. Solvents, undercoating compounds, and coating chemistries bring EPA air-quality / volatile-organic-compound (VOC) rules; runoff is increasingly regulated under local stormwater/wastewater ordinances; and some coating chemistries face growing PFAS ("forever chemicals") scrutiny.
• Window-tint law (for shops that do the residual film work coded here). Every state sets a minimum Visible Light Transmission (VLT) percentage — the share of light that must pass through a treated window after installation. Limits vary widely and states change them (for example, Louisiana loosened its front-window limit to 25% VLT in August 2025). Installers carry the compliance risk. [16]
• State and local requirements — business licensing, zoning, chemical storage, fire codes, sales taxes, environmental permits, and labor rules — apply on top.

Regulation here is mostly a cost-of-doing-business and compliance issue, not a barrier that concentrates the industry.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is a textbook fragmented industry. Federal concentration data for 2022 show the top four firms at just 15.2% of receipts, the top eight at 20.1%, the top 20 at 27.3%, and even the top 50 at only 34.4% — with a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a 0–10,000 concentration score) of 86. [2] For context, U.S. antitrust regulators generally begin scrutinizing markets above roughly 1,500; an HHI of 86 signals near-atomized competition where no one has pricing power by scale. (These are national employer-firm measures and do not prove that every local market is competitive.)

The advantages that matter are local density, reputation, technician recruiting and training, parts and tire availability, fleet relationships, digital booking, warranty support, and purchasing scale. Independent shops compete on trust and flexibility; chains compete on convenience, brand, procurement, and standardized processes.

The consolidation that exists comes in three forms:

1. Franchising — Ziebart, Tint World, Meineke, and coating-brand licensors (Ceramic Pro, Gtechniq) impose brand standards and buying power on otherwise independent shops. [32]
2. Roll-ups — private-equity platforms aggregate single-location operators: Michelin/Sumitomo's TBC sold 595 NTB and Tire Kingdom stores to Mavis in 2023 and agreed to sell its Midas franchise portfolio to Mavis in 2025; Mavis then agreed in 2026 to acquire Pep Boys from Icahn Enterprises for ~$700 million (pending). Sun Auto (Leonard Green) and Driven Brands are also active consolidators. [23][31]
3. Supplier-led networks — XPEL and film makers build de-facto national footprints by certifying and equipping thousands of installers without owning them. [17]

Even so, the long tail of independents is enormous and self-replenishing because start-up costs are trivial. Consolidation nibbles; it does not dominate — and store count alone is not a moat. Integration quality, customer retention, service accuracy, and balance-sheet discipline determine whether a roll-up creates value.

9. Risks

• Discretionary cyclicality. Appearance, coating, film, and rustproofing work is postponable; revenue softens fast in a consumer downturn.
• Fragmentation and price competition. Low entry barriers keep commodity margins thin and undifferentiated shops vulnerable; online tire sellers and large chains make some pricing highly visible.
• Technician scarcity and wage inflation. Skilled A/C, PPF, and coating technicians are scarce and mobile; capacity cannot expand without them, and turnover hits throughput directly.
• Input costs. Film and coating chemistry prices, tire and parts costs, and tariff exposure on imported film squeeze material margins.
• Safety and liability. Incorrect tire work, refrigerant handling, lifts, and repair comebacks create litigation, insurance, and reputational costs.
• Regulatory. MVAC certification, shifting state tint limits, environmental/runoff rules, and PFAS scrutiny raise compliance cost and can void certain services.
• EV mix shift and OEM encroachment. Fewer fluids and less brake wear reduce some maintenance categories; factory-applied coatings and dealer-bundled protection packages can pull appearance work upstream.
• Roll-up execution. Acquisitions can fail through poor integration, inconsistent service, excessive leverage, or overpayment.
• Data risk. Employer-only federal statistics understate small and no-payroll operators, and company filings blend multiple NAICS categories — so both the size and the public "proxies" must be read with care.
• For the public proxies specifically: XPEL is a volatile small-cap with customer- and geography-concentration and demand tied to enthusiast spending [17]; Driven Brands is a leveraged, restructuring roll-up whose 811198 exposure is only a slice of a broader car-care book. [18]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes. The listed exposures are indirect; use them as operating proxies, not direct measurements of NAICS 811198, and read segment disclosures to separate repair, tire retail, wholesale, manufacturing, dealership, collision, glass, oil-change, and car-wash activity. XPEL is the closest thing to a pure bet on the protection-and-appearance sub-theme, but a volatile small-cap. [17] Monro and Driven Brands offer service-chain exposure that includes A/C and tire-repair work inside larger books. [18][19] The tire makers (Goodyear, Bridgestone, Michelin) and materials companies (Eastman, 3M, Avery Dennison) give diluted exposure that this industry barely moves. Investors buy these for tickers, dividends, and multiples; the underlying service industry itself is not directly listed. Useful screens: same-store sales and traffic, average repair order and service mix, technician productivity, labor and tire gross margins, inventory turns, store openings/closures and acquisition integration, and capital expenditure / free cash flow / leverage.

Private routes — where most of the money in this industry actually is: buy or build an independent A/C, tire-repair, rustproofing, or protection shop; take a franchise (Ziebart, Tint World, Meineke) for brand and buying power; license a coating brand (Ceramic Pro, Gtechniq); or back a regional roll-up consolidating single-location operators. Diligence should emphasize normalized store-level earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA); bay count, utilization, and technician retention; customer repeat rates and online reputation; tire/parts purchasing terms; fleet-account concentration; lease terms, environmental liabilities, and disposal contracts; equipment age; warranty/comeback rates; founder dependence; and franchise royalties and territory rights.

Near-term outlook. The structural backdrop is supportive: a record-old vehicle fleet, high vehicle-miles-traveled, and high car prices that reward protecting the asset, with a still-growing consumer appetite for coatings and film. [8][9][10] EV adoption — a real threat to oil-change and mechanical peers — is closer to neutral-to-positive here, because it changes the service mix more than it removes the need, and EV owners buy heavily into tint, film, and coatings. [11] The offsetting realities are the industry's deep fragmentation, which caps pricing power for anyone without a differentiated brand, and the discretionary nature of the spend, which makes near-term revenue sensitive to the consumer cycle. Expect steady, unspectacular secular growth, thin margins for commodity operators, and outsized returns concentrated in branded, premium, supplier-led, and well-integrated regional positions rather than in the average shop.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (CBP), 2023 — NAICS 811198 establishments, employment, annual and first-quarter payroll (Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms (NAICS 811198) — firms, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50 shares, HHI (Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN
3. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards, 2023 — $10 million receipts standard for NAICS 811198. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau, NAICS 811198 — All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance: definition, illustrative examples, and cross-references (2022). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=811198&input=811198&year=2022
5. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns Methodology — coverage and exclusions (self-employed, nonemployers, no-EIN businesses). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics (program overview) — basis for the employer/nonemployer undercount note. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics.html
7. IBISWorld, All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance (NAICS 811198) industry report — broad third-party market-size estimate (~$13B) including nonemployer operators. https://www.ibisworld.com/classifications/naics/811198/all-other-automotive-repair-and-maintenance/
8. Grand View Research, U.S. Paint Protection Film Market — size and forecast, 2025 — appearance-protection sub-segment growth (high-single to low-double digits). https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-paint-protection-film-market-report
9. S&P Global Mobility, U.S. Vehicle Age Rises Again to 12.8 Years in 2025 (May 2025) — 289M light vehicles. https://press.spglobal.com/2025-05-21-U-S-Vehicle-Age-Rises-Again-to-12-8-Years-in-2025-According-to-S-P-Global-Mobility
10. U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Annual Vehicle Distance Traveled — 2024 (Table VM-1) — 3.29 trillion VMT. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2024/vm1.cfm
11. U.S. Department of Energy, Alternative Fuels Data Center, Maintenance and Safety of Electric Vehicles. https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric-maintenance
12. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Regulatory Requirements for MVAC System Servicing (Clean Air Act Section 609). https://www.epa.gov/mvac/regulatory-requirements-mvac-system-servicing
13. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Automobiles, Tires, and Boats — scrap-tire management. https://www.epa.gov/large-scale-residential-demolition/automobiles-tires-and-boats
14. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Hazards While Servicing Light Truck, Automobile, and Other Small Tires (Safety and Health Information Bulletin). https://www.osha.gov/publications
15. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Nixing the Fix: Warranties, Mag-Moss, and Restrictions on Repairs (2019). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/03/nixing-fix-warranties-mag-moss-and-restrictions-repairs
16. Tint Wiz / Ceramic Pro, Window Tint Laws by State (2025) — VLT limits and Louisiana Act 143 (Aug. 2025) change. https://tintwiz.com/window-tint-laws-by-state
17. XPEL, Inc., Q4 and Full-Year 2024 Results — revenue $420.4M, net income $45.5M, gross margin 42.2%. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250226143725/en/XPEL-Reports-Revenue-of-%24107.5-million-in-Fourth-Quarter-2024
18. Driven Brands Holdings Inc., FY2025 Form 10-K — 4,200+ locations (incl. Meineke, 1-800-Radiator & A/C), ~$2.1B revenue, U.S. car-wash divestiture. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804745/000180474526000048/drvn-20251227.htm
19. Monro, Inc., FY2025 Form 10-K — ~1,260 U.S. stores (March 2025). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/876427/000156276225000146/mnro-20250329x10k.htm
20. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, 2025 Form 10-K — ~505 company-owned retail + ~180 commercial outlets. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/42582/000162828026006708/gt-20251231.htm
21. Bridgestone Americas, Firestone Complete Auto Care Celebrates 100 Years — 1,800+ U.S. stores. https://www.bridgestoneamericas.com/en/press-release-details.en.2026.firestone-complete-auto-care-celebrates-100-years
22. TBC Corporation, Our Companies — Big O Tires (~470 franchised locations) and wholesale/distribution businesses. https://www.tbccorp.com/our-companies/
23. Michelin, TBC Corporation to Divest Its Retail Network (2023 and 2025) — NTB/Tire Kingdom and Midas divestitures to Mavis. https://www.michelin.com/en/publications/finance/tbc-corporation-to-divest-its-retail-network-and-to-focus-on-wholesale-distribution-and-franchise-businesses
24. Mavis, About Us — network scale after Midas acquisition. https://www.mavis.com/about-us/
25. BayPine and TSG Consumer Partners, Investor Group to Acquire Mavis Tire Express Services (2021). https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210305005229/en/Investor-Group-Led-by-BayPine-in-Partnership-with-TSG-Consumer-Partners-to-Acquire-Mavis-Tire-Express-Services
26. Sun Auto Tire & Service, Our Network — 575+ service centers. https://www.sun.auto/our-network
27. Leonard Green & Partners, Investment Portfolio: Sun Auto Tire & Service. https://www.leonardgreen.com/portfolio/
28. Discount Tire, Our Story — 1,200+ stores in 39 states. https://www.discounttire.com/about-us/our-story
29. Les Schwab, About Us — independent tire-and-service network. https://www.lesschwab.com/about-us
30. Tire Discounters, About Tire Discounters — 200+ stores in eight states. https://tirediscounters.com/pages/about
31. Mavis, Mavis to Acquire Pep Boys from Icahn Enterprises (2026) — ~$700M, pending. https://www.mavis.com/news/mavis-pep-boys/
32. Wikipedia, Ziebart — services (rustproofing, undercoating, protection, detailing) and ~1,200 service centers in 37 countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziebart