US auto repair universe, mapped
There are 227,418 auto repair shops in the US. We map each one and the owner who actually buys.
For shop-software, parts, diagnostic, processor, and financing teams selling into independent auto repair. The banner on the bay door is rarely the buyer. The owner sitting in the back office is.
The market, in three numbers
A long tail of single-shop operators.
are single-shop operators
Three in four US auto repair shops are owned by an operator who runs exactly one location. Not a chain. Not a franchise. One owner, one bay roof, often the founder still pulling wrenches.
share held by the top ten chains
Jiffy Lube, Midas, Valvoline, Mavis, Meineke, Goodyear Auto Service, Firestone, Pep Boys, Christian Brothers, and AAMCO combined own under one tenth of the sites. The rest is fragmented.
sites at the largest banner
Jiffy Lube, the biggest single banner by US footprint, runs around 2,000 locations. A rounding error against 227,418, and a single account-management team.
Sources: IBISWorld US Auto Repair Industry Report 2024 ownership breakdown; Auto Care Association Factbook; Orbital shop-by-shop map, April 2026.
Methodology
Why our auto-repair count moves and the published estimates do not.
The headline figures you usually see, around 227,000 establishments in IBISWorld or 166,000 in the Census NAICS 8111 series, come from once-a-year industry reports. They are accurate the day they ship and stale by month two. We work shop by shop, in the open, and refresh.
How the 227,418 figure is built
- Start with every active US auto repair location. Cross-referenced against the IBISWorld US Auto Repair Industry universe, the US Census County Business Patterns NAICS 8111 series, and the Auto Care Association Factbook on independent aftermarket service outlets.
- Resolve each shop to a real operating business. The banner on the bay door is often a franchise or a marketing co-op. The operating business is the LLC or sole proprietor who holds the lease, the dealer licence, and the parts account.
- Find the owner. Around 75 percent of US auto repair shops are independent single-shop operators. Most of those owners never built a LinkedIn profile. We find them by name, with a verified email and a direct dial, the same way we do for every other long-tail vertical.
- Drop the dead pins. Closures, owner retirements, banner switches, shops that quit doing brakes and now only sell tires. The annual reports keep them on for a year. We do not.
- Refresh on a rolling schedule. Shop-level signals run continuously against the universe of US small businesses, so what you query in June is not what shipped in January.
If you want the source breakdown for a specific state or banner, ask. We do not hide the working.
By state
Where the auto repair shops actually are.
The five largest states carry roughly 38 percent of the universe. Per capita, the picture flips: thinly populated states with older vehicle fleets and longer drive distances have far more shops per resident than the coasts.
| # | State | Auto repair shops | Per 100k residents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 25,800 | 66 |
| 2 | Texas | 22,400 | 72 |
| 3 | Florida | 16,100 | 70 |
| 4 | New York | 12,200 | 62 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | 9,800 | 75 |
| 6 | Illinois | 9,100 | 73 |
| 7 | Ohio | 8,900 | 75 |
| 8 | Georgia | 7,600 | 68 |
| 9 | North Carolina | 7,200 | 66 |
| 10 | Michigan | 6,900 | 69 |
| 11 | New Jersey | 6,400 | 70 |
| 12 | Virginia | 5,700 | 65 |
| 13 | Washington | 5,200 | 66 |
| 14 | Tennessee | 5,000 | 70 |
| 15 | Arizona | 4,800 | 63 |
Counts rounded to the nearest hundred for display. The dataset itself is exact, down to the street address. Source: Orbital shop-by-shop map, April 2026; per-capita math against US Census 2024 population estimates.
The top ten chains
The largest banners, and how little of the market they actually hold.
The names below are loud. The math is quiet. The ten banners together account for somewhere between 5 and 8 percent of US auto repair shops. The remaining 92 percent is independents, family multi-shop operators, and regional banners most vendors have never heard of.
| # | Chain | US sites | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jiffy Lube | ~2,000 | Owned by Shell, almost entirely franchised. Quick-lube focus, not full-service repair. The franchisee, not Shell, is the buyer for shop software and parts programs. |
| 2 | Valvoline Instant Oil Change | ~1,800 | Now operated by Valvoline Inc. after the lubricants split. Mix of company-operated and franchised. Quick-lube model, drive-through layout. |
| 3 | Midas | ~1,200 | Owned by TBC Corporation (Sumitomo Corporation of Americas). Almost entirely franchised general repair. Brakes, exhaust, tires, full service. |
| 4 | Mavis Tire and Brake | ~1,800 | Private-equity rollup that absorbed NTB, Tire Kingdom, and others. Heavily East Coast and Southeast. Tire-led model expanding into full repair. |
| 5 | Meineke Car Care Centers | ~700 | Driven Brands franchise. General repair with a brake and exhaust heritage. Franchisee-operated, with the owner on the parts and software contract. |
| 6 | Goodyear Auto Service | ~700 | Goodyear-owned company stores plus a wider Tire and Service Network of independent affiliates. The affiliate, not Goodyear, is the buying decision. |
| 7 | Firestone Complete Auto Care | ~1,700 | Bridgestone-owned, predominantly company-operated. One of the few major banners where the corporate office is actually the buyer. |
| 8 | Pep Boys | ~900 | Owned by Icahn Automotive. Company-operated retail and service. Footprint compressed since 2015 but still meaningful in California, Florida, and Texas. |
| 9 | Christian Brothers Automotive | ~290 | Franchised general repair, fast-growing. Higher revenue per shop than the quick-lube banners. Strong in Texas and the Sun Belt. |
| 10 | AAMCO Transmissions and Total Car Care | ~530 | Franchised, transmission-led with expanded general service. Each franchisee runs the parts, software, and processor decisions for their own shop. |
Counts marked "~" are approximate, drawn from each operator's most recent annual report, franchise disclosure document, or 10-K and cross-referenced with our shop map. The order above is by US footprint, not revenue. For franchised banners, the franchisee is the buyer for vendor software, parts, and processor decisions, not the parent company.
Our take
Independent auto repair is the largest untapped vendor market in the US.
We believe
If you sell into auto repair and you only target the chains, you are walking past more than 200,000 buyers.
The standard vendor motion in this market is to chase the banner. Sign up Midas corporate, sign up Jiffy Lube, get on the preferred-vendor list, win the annual contract. The math does not reward that motion. The top ten banners combined hold somewhere between 5 and 8 percent of US shops. The other 92 percent, more than 200,000 sites, sits with independent owners and small multi-shop operators who never came up in their CRM because the CRM does not index three-bay LLCs in Lubbock.
One of those operators called us last quarter. He runs two general-repair shops in suburban Atlanta. He had been on the same paper-and-spreadsheet workflow for nine years, was actively shopping for a shop management system, and had not been contacted by a single one of the named SaaS vendors in that category. Not Tekmetric, not Mitchell 1, not Shop-Ware. He went on Reddit, asked, picked one, and signed up. That is the market most vendors are missing, not because the operators are hiding, but because the data tools are searching for "Midas" instead of for the LLC that pays the lease on the shop next door.
Who buys this data
B2B vendors selling into 227,418 shops.
This page is for the teams selling into auto repair shops, not the operators themselves. The buyer for this dataset usually falls into one of these categories.
Shop management software
Tekmetric, Mitchell 1, Shop-Ware, AutoLeap, and the next wave of cloud shop management vendors selling the upgrade off a paper invoice book or a desktop tool installed in 2011.
Auto parts distribution
NAPA, AutoZone Commercial, O'Reilly First Call, Advance Professional, and regional warehouse distributors winning the daily delivery account at the independent shop, not the corporate office.
Diagnostic equipment
Snap-on, Mac Tools, Matco, Autel, Launch. The route truck still does the close, but the owner is the budget holder. The data closes the door at the right address.
Shop financing and equipment leasing
Capital providers funding lifts, alignment racks, AC machines, and EV-ready ADAS calibration bays. The decision is the owner, the underwriting is on the operating LLC.
Payment processors and shop POS
Card processors and integrated shop POS vendors winning the switch from the legacy terminal in the front office. Often bundled with the management software change.
Marketing, SEO, and training
Platforms like RepairPal and RepairShopr's network play, local SEO agencies focused on independents, and ASE certification programs reaching technicians and owner-managers directly.
Adjacent universes built the same way: the auto shop dataset, the auto dealer dataset, the US gas station map, and the broader by-industry email lists.
Plain-spoken
When the auto-repair dataset is the wrong fit.
Do not buy this if any of the following are true.
You only sell into the franchised chains corporate offices. If your motion is one annual contract with Midas HQ and one with Driven Brands, you do not need 227,418 records. You need two phone numbers. Save your budget.
You only sell to new-car dealership service departments. Dealership service bays are a different universe with different buying centres, different DMS integrations, and different OEM constraints. We map them separately.
You need part-level vehicle compatibility data. ACES and PIES catalogue data, VIN decoding, and OE cross-reference live with the parts data publishers. We map the shops and the owners, not the SKU-to-VIN matrix.
Your product is for consumers. Driver-facing shop locators, review platforms aimed at car owners, or roadside assistance apps want a consumer directory, not an owner-contact map. Different shape, different licence.
The honest version
Why most auto-repair vendor data is wrong.
If you Google "how many auto repair shops in the US," the top result is usually an IBISWorld or Statista snippet citing roughly 227,000 establishments. That is the right ballpark for the broad addressable market. The US Census Bureau's NAICS 8111 series, the one your finance team likes, reports closer to 166,000 because it counts general automotive repair only and strips out the oil-change-only banners, the tire-and-brake specialists, the transmission shops, and the body shops. Different definitions, different numbers, both technically correct, neither one helpful if you are trying to build an outbound list. Our defensible US auto repair count is 227,418, built from the full service mix, because that is the universe your sales team is actually selling into.
The next problem is the banner. Enterprise data tools index by company, so "Jiffy Lube" looks like one customer with 2,000 locations. It is not. Jiffy Lube is a Shell-owned franchise system. The 2,000 sites are owned by hundreds of separate franchisees, each on a different multi-unit development agreement, each making their own parts, software, and processor decisions. The big database returns one row. The reality is hundreds of buyers. The same pattern repeats across Midas, Meineke, AAMCO, Christian Brothers, and every other franchised banner on the top-ten list.
This is exactly the gap Orbital was built for. We map the universe of US small and mid-market businesses, find the owner of each one, and validate the contact before it reaches you. Nothing about that is auto-repair-specific, which is why we can also map dentists, HVAC contractors, med spas, restaurants, and gas stations the same way. What is specific to auto repair is the layer on top: banner affiliation, shop type (general, oil-change, tire-and-brake, transmission, body), bay count, and whether the operator runs one shop or twelve.
One more piece of context worth pricing in. IBISWorld, the US Census County Business Patterns, and the Auto Care Association all publish annual reports on this market. They are excellent, and we cite them. They are also annual. For a vendor doing outbound this quarter, the question is which shops are open this Monday and which owner is on the phone. That is the gap a shop-by-shop, owner-by-owner map closes.
Questions
Before you ask sales about the auto-repair dataset.
How many auto repair shops are there in the US?
There are 227,418 active auto repair shops in the United States, based on Orbital's April 2026 shop-by-shop map and cross-checked against the IBISWorld US Auto Repair Industry Report, 2024. The narrower US Census NAICS 8111 figure, around 166,000 establishments, captures general automotive repair only and excludes oil-change-only, tire-and-brake banners, transmission specialists, and body shops that most vendors include in their addressable market.
Who owns the most auto repair shops in the US?
Jiffy Lube operates the largest US footprint at around 2,000 locations, followed by Midas at roughly 1,200 and Valvoline Instant Oil Change at about 1,800. Even combined, the top ten chains hold somewhere between 5 and 8 percent of US auto repair shops. The rest, more than 200,000 sites, is independent operators and small multi-shop owners.
Are most auto repair shops independent or chain?
Independent. Roughly 75 percent of US auto repair shops are owned by a single-shop operator. Another 15 percent are small multi-shop owners running between two and five locations. The named national chains, Midas, Meineke, Jiffy Lube, Valvoline, Mavis, Goodyear Auto Service, Firestone, Pep Boys, Christian Brothers, AAMCO, together account for under 10 percent of the universe. This is the largest fragmented vendor market in the US small business economy.
How is your auto repair count different from IBISWorld and the Census?
IBISWorld reports approximately 227,000 auto repair establishments in its 2024 report, which is close to our figure but published once a year. The US Census Bureau NAICS 8111 series reports approximately 166,000 establishments, but that bucket excludes oil-change-only and tire-and-brake-only banners that most vendors want in their pipeline. Our 227,418 figure refreshes monthly and includes the full service mix from general repair to oil change, tire, transmission, and brake-and-muffler specialists.
Which state has the most auto repair shops?
California leads with roughly 25,800 shops, followed by Texas at 22,400, Florida at 16,100, New York at 12,200, and Pennsylvania at 9,800. Per capita, the long-tail rural states like Wyoming, Montana, and West Virginia have more shops per resident than the coastal markets, driven by longer fleet life and fewer dealership service bays per square mile.
Can I filter the auto repair dataset by state, banner, or shop size?
Yes. The dataset filters by state, metro, banner affiliation, shop type (general repair, oil-change, tire and brake, transmission, body, fleet), bay count, and approximate revenue band. Most vendors filter first by their geographic acceptance footprint, then by shop type to match their product fit.
Who actually buys auto repair shop data?
Vendors selling into independent shops. Shop management software providers like Tekmetric, Mitchell 1, and Shop-Ware. Parts distribution networks at NAPA, AutoZone Commercial, O'Reilly First Call, and Advance Professional. Diagnostic equipment makers including Snap-on, Mac Tools, and Matco. Payment processors, equipment financing teams, marketing and SEO platforms targeting independents, and ASE training providers. The common thread is they need the owner, not the corporate office of a banner the shop is not actually part of.
Can I get a sample of the auto repair shop owner data?
Yes. Tell us the states or shop types you want and we send a sample of around 100 verified owner records so you can check them against your own pipeline before anything changes hands. There is no charge for the sample.
See the auto repair owner dataset before you pay for it.
Tell us the states or shop types you want. We send a free sample of around 100 verified owner records you can check against your own pipeline, no commitment, no email-list back-and-forth.
Get the sample