Progress Through Change: A Q&A with New AASP/MA President Matthew Ciaschini

by Chasidy Rae Sisk

The association has undergone some pretty significant changes in recent months.  The association has seen a recent shift in leadership as Past President Kevin Gallerani (Cape Auto Body and Service; Plymouth) passed the torch into the capable hands of Matthew Ciaschini (Full Tilt Auto Body & Collision; West Hatfield). 

As the association’s new president, Ciaschini has high hopes for the progress that can be achieved if the industry works together, and he sat down with New England Automotive Report to share his thoughts on what the future holds for auto body shops in the Commonwealth.

New England Automotive Report: What industry experience do you bring to your new role as President?

Matthew Ciaschini: My brother Zac and I have co-owned Full Tilt Auto Body for the past 15 years. I started in this business with just the two of us and one body technician, and we’ve grown into a fairly successful collision business that employs 18 industry professionals, excluding Zac and myself. There have certainly been some pains throughout the process, but we love this industry.

NEAR: Did you work in the auto body field before starting Full Tilt?

MC: No, I was on a completely different path…it’s funny to think about the turns that life takes. Collision repair was Zac’s career; he worked as a painter for former AASP/MA member Ed Nalewanski (Ed’s Auto Body; Easthampton) before deciding to start his own little business. I was working as a special education teacher and deejaying on the side at the time.

In 2010, my mother was sick with pancreatic cancer which she had been fighting for about five years. It took her life that year, but before she passed, she sat me down to express how much she wanted Zac and me to get along as brothers. Once she was gone, I remembered her words and took them seriously, so when Zac confided in me that he was struggling a bit with the business side of things at the shop, I offered to help out a couple days a week while I contemplated my next career move. I’d worked as a restaurant manager, so I had a little experience with running a business as well. I always loved cars and had a decent running knowledge of how they worked. Within a week of coming into the shop, I was working full-time to help prevent anything from falling through the cracks. Before long, I realized that this would be my “home” professionally, so I assimilated into my new career path by becoming a licensed appraiser and learning everything I could about the industry, cars and insurers. Now, here we are, 15 years later. I’ve come a long way, but I’m still learning every day.

NEAR: When and how did you get involved with the association in Massachusetts?

MC: Within the first year of my involvement in the business, Full Tilt became a member, but I started to get involved after I attended my first meeting. I met some experienced repairers – Mike Beal (Michael’s Frame & Collision; Westfield) and Peter Langone (Langonet Auto Body; Agawam) – who took me under their wings and became my mentors, offering business advice and encouraging me to become part of what they were doing. Both of them were adamant about getting young guys involved in the association, and they helped us grow as repairers to do the best we possibly could. They shared a philosophy of “do the best work possible without worrying about what the insurance company is going to pay,” and that mentality really dictated everything we did going forward. 

A couple years later, Pete started talking to me about becoming a member of the Executive Board, and I was inducted as a Board member during Casino Night at the Mohegan Sun Casino in November 2016. I served as treasurer during the 2019-2020 term, and when Kevin became president in 2021, he asked me to be his vice president. I accepted but just recently realized that meant I was next in line to become president (laughs).

NEAR: When you first joined the association, did you have any ambitions of serving on the Board or becoming president?

MC: No, not at all! I never thought I would be involved at this level. I remember watching Rick Starbard (Rick’s Auto Collision; Revere), who was president at the time, delivering a presentation. I looked up to him then and still do, but what he was doing was so far outside the realm of what I saw for myself…I mean, here was a guy talking about taking your business back, about being independent and telling the insurers what you’re going to charge because you have self-worth. It was so different from anything I’d heard before; it was amazingly refreshing. Even when Kevin asked me to serve as his vice president, I wasn’t thinking that I would fill this role in the future. I just keep going where I’m needed because I believe we need to stick together in order to prop this industry up and help it progress to where it needs to be. 

NEAR: As AASP/MA President, what are your top priorities for the association moving forward?

MC: First of all, I’m honored and excited to be stepping into this role, especially as we hope to rebrand the association. I believe this is a great opportunity for our organization and our industry. Progress requires change, and this feels like a rebirth for the association. I’m looking forward to seeing how this change helps us progress together.

And I specifically mention the need to progress together because too often, shops push against each other and see competitors in a negative light. We need to recognize that coming together as an industry will help us elevate the standards of auto body repair across the board. A lot of times, we divide ourselves by focusing on who fits into which category: program or independent, family-owned-and-operated or MSO…None of that matters because we’re all fighting the same battle to get reimbursed by the same billpayer in most situations while helping keep the motoring public safe, so why aren’t we working together to make it better for all of us? I understand how easy it is to focus on the microcosm of your own shop, but AASP/MA is here to help promote the greater good, and being successful in that goal requires all of us.

Continuing to push forward with our legislative initiatives is also important to me. Brian Bernard (Total Care Accident Repair; Raynham), our legislative director at-large, has been hugely influential in his role. With the support of Lobbyist Guy Glodis and the other backing we’ve developed over the years, I’m confident that we have all the right pieces in place and that we’re going to make some meaningful progress this coming session.

We also need to continue advancing when it comes to education by providing training to association members on the many facets of the collision industry that will help them better their businesses. Association membership means much more than just writing a check once a year; the value of that check pays off 100-fold by helping them run their businesses better, but to see the benefit, shops need to attend our meetings. With that in mind, it’s also important that we grow our membership to help advance a larger portion of Massachusetts shops. Dealer shops are powerful and hold a lot of weight in this industry, so I’d like to see more of them get involved. By lining up all these pieces, I think we can really demonstrate the value that this association offers and attract more shops to become members, and as we grow together, we become stronger, enhancing that value even more.

NEAR: What do you think are some of the industry’s biggest challenges, and how do you hope to help address them in your new role?

MC: Right now, the biggest challenge for the auto body industry in Massachusetts is the Auto Damage Appraiser Licensing Board (ADALB), which is why our legislative agenda for the past six years has included the need to move it from the Division of Insurance to the Department of Occupational Licensure. [Ciaschini will discuss his thoughts surrounding this initiative in next month’s edition of Damage Report, AASP/MA’s members-only newsletter.]

Our ability to make this type of significant change is demonstrated by our success in establishing an advisory board to study labor reimbursement rates [see page 28 for more information on this recent development]. That’s vital because we’re all dealing with the issue of techs aging out, and once we’re collecting a reasonable reimbursement rate, we’ll have a fighting chance of drawing fresh talent to this industry on the technician side and even on the appraiser and office admin side. Paying employees well is imperative, especially in a state that has the highest cost of living in the country. How can we combat the cost of employees if insurers continue to pay us $45 an hour to fix a car? We can’t, unless we better our industry by working from the inside out through these types of legislative initiatives that will improve things for all of us. 

That’s why it’s so important that we get out of our own ways and learn to work together as an industry. One of our biggest challenges is ourselves! We need to stop alienating other shops for their personal business decisions; our emphasis needs to be on valuing a high-quality and safe repair using OEM procedures. If we want to move forward in the right direction, we need to do things right. When we do good, good things happen. We cannot let another industry affect what we do because what we do impacts people’s lives.

NEAR: What advice or encouragement would you offer a fellow shop owner who may be struggling?

MC: Understand your worth. Do you know that you’re capturing the repair properly in order to get reimbursed properly? If you are doing it right but still struggling, why? Are you taking advantage of all the resources the Alliance has made available? If you’re not a member, now’s the time to join! I have no doubt that shops embracing the lessons we’ve been teaching for the past decade are able to grow and strengthen their businesses. It’s not meant to be easy, but instead of dwelling on the negative, we need to focus on the things we can implement every day to improve ourselves and our businesses.

NEAR: Is there anything else you’d like to share as you begin your presidency?

MC: Moving forward, the association will become a community, and the more community-minded we become, the better chance we’ll have to help every individual member grow a better, stronger business – and the more we’ll also improve the industry at large. Belonging to an association isn’t about “what can you do for me?” It’s about the progression of the collision industry and how we are going to make it better so we can sustain the livelihoods of ourselves and our employees for the next 10, 20 or 30 years. It’s a big goal, but together, we can accomplish anything.

Want more? Check out the January 2025 issue of New England Automotive Report!