The State of the Shop: 2026
What over 5,000 tire, service, and auto aftermarket shops reveal about digital growth, demand, and the road ahead.
Teams are lean. Costs are up. Customers decide faster. And more of the buying process now happens before your phone rings. The State of the Shop: 2026 shows where tire, service, and auto aftermarket shops are losing work, what the strongest shops are doing differently, and what to fix first.
From the Data – Three Numbers Worth Knowing
54%
of driver activity happens outside business hours
71%
of drivers want to get service quotes online
44%
more monthly website visitors for shops with an active social presence
This isn’t guesswork. It’s observed behavior.
The State of the Shop: 2026 is built from real patterns across more than 5,000 shops, plus what shop teams and partners are seeing every day. It looks at the places where work slips away: search, website visits, quote requests, follow-up, and the handoffs in between.
Not what shops say should happen. What the data shows happens.
Where Shops Lose Work
Most shops don’t lose work because they need more ideas. They lose it when the basics break down. A call gets missed. Service information is hard to find. A customer looks after hours and has no clear next step.
This report shows where those breakdowns happen most often—and what stronger shops do to keep strategies intact.
What AI Is Changing
AI is changing how drivers compare shops. They’re getting answers faster and narrowing options earlier. That raises the cost of thin service pages and broken contact paths. When your information is hard to trust, you can lose visibility before a customer reaches your site.
Inside the report, you’ll see where AI is already showing up inside shops and what still matters most: clear information, working handoffs, and trust.
What “Good” Looks Like in 2026
Winning shops are easier to find, easier to trust, and easier to do business with. Their information is complete. Their inquiry paths work. Their follow-up doesn’t stop after the first touch.
This report gives you a practical baseline for what good looks like now—so you can compare your current setup, spot weak points, and decide what to fix first.
Also Inside: A Pass/Fail Checklist Your Team Can Run Today
Check your shop against four areas that matter most:
- Information consistency and inquiry path integrity
- Website completeness and navigation clarity
- Response discipline and after-hours coverage
- Follow-up and reporting alignment
No fluff. Just a clearer way to see what’s working, what’s leaking, and where to start.
“We see a lot of shops wrestling with the same thing — how to get found online, how to stretch their marketing budget, how to keep up with multiple software systems all at once. The shops that pull ahead in 2026 won’t necessarily be the biggest or the best-funded. They’ll be the ones that consolidate and automate the right systems so they can stop spending so much time working ON their shop and get back to working IN it.”
– Aubrey Amborn, General Manager of Sales, Net Driven
Download the Report
Use it to spot leaks, tighten weak handoffs, and make the next step clearer for every customer.