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Recall numbers keep climbing, with more than 12 million issued in the first quarter of this year, a multi-year high, according to BizzyCar.
That all can translate to dealers waking up to ringing phones, scheduling concerns, and grumpy customers.
Not to mention the stress of waiting on parts to fix those recalls, sometimes months later.
With that in mind, here are three ways dealers are creating retention and revenue opportunities during the recall rush.
Morgan Auto Group is turning recall chaos into a communication playbook.
Approximately 28.4 million vehicles were recalled in 2025, according to BizzyCar. And the numbers vary by brand.
Ford Motor Company, for example, recalled 19.5 million vehicles between April 2025 and March 2026, more than every other automaker combined over the past year, according to an iSeeCars analysis of NHTSA data.
As shown below, Toyota was second at just over 4 million.
Custom analysis via CDG’s Joe Cecala
But it’s not necessarily those staggering numbers that are the problem, BizzyCar CEO Ryan Maher told CDG.
"Roughly 20–30% of recalled vehicles remain unrepaired months after notice is issued," Maher said. "That's millions of potentially unsafe cars on the road. The spike in recall volume isn't the crisis—the crisis is the completion gap."
Ryan Maher
BizzyCar
With Maher’s point in mind, we spoke to Scott Stephens, a regional fixed operations director covering 13 Florida stores for Morgan Auto Group, who confirmed they often find out about a recall when a customer does.
That's when the phones start to ring.
"...Phone volume increases substantially the next day or two, with a lot of questions about that recall and getting booked in for that recall," Stephens said.
Scott Stephens
Morgan Auto Group
His team opts for transparency from the first call.
"You just have to let customers know that you can't perform that recall yet," Stephens said. From there, his group builds lists of everyone who called (some using pens and paper, others using spreadsheets), so the in-house call center can follow up when a fix is available.
Once recall repairs start stacking up, the group adjusts the technician schedules to accommodate, rather than limit, appointment capacity.
That said: They also found a solution to crowded bays by thinking outside the… building.
Stephens said that mobile service helped alleviate bay capacity (a win for everyone) and, with at least one automaker, adds a financial boost (a win for the shop).
"It has made a huge impact financially for the stores to be proactive and attack these recalls through mobile instead of locking their lanes up and their bays up with recalls," he said.
They recently had a three-person mobile team completing 364 software updates across Florida in a single week for a fleet client.
Ford has a good program that offsets the pay for such repairs, though it's not limited to recall work, he said.
Whether in-house or on the road, Stephens counts recall and warranty work as bonus opportunities.
His POV: Take care of the people and recall work properly, and win a customer for life.
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Nemer Motor Group is retooling its service departments to handle all situations, including the uptick in recall work.
Eric Nemer, an executive partner at his family's Nemer Motor Group, said there’s so much warranty work right now that it can affect the service lane by nudging service advisors into bad habits.
“Warranty work is like eating fast food, sure those are calories, but you don't want to depend on it long-term, or you're going to have all kinds of problems…,” Nemer told CDG. "It can also accustom service advisors to being paper pushers, rather than checking and advising, which is their actual role.”
Eric Nemer
Nemer Motor Group
Nemer’s fix: Focusing on back-to-basics training for properly handling any situation, including maintenance and heavy repairs. And of course, recall work.
Usually, training happens in-house, though several Nemer staffers attended a recent service advisor training hosted by the Eastern New York Coalition of Automotive Retailers, Inc. (ENYCAR).
“We do not pick and choose the type of work that comes in the door,” Nemer said.
Speaking of: Not all recall repairs are created equal.
Fixing software issues, for instance, does not take less time because they're not physical repairs, through no fault of the technician. (Anyone who has updated their phone can only imagine how long it takes for a car to reboot.)
Nemer says recall work can also affect normal procedures.
For example, he said techs may feel discouraged from sending MPI videos, with that reluctance stemming from time and efficiency concerns.
He added: Recalls already are taking up a bay, and the tech often feels the factory does not adequately compensate for the actual time these jobs take.
“Adding a multi-point inspection impacts their efficiency, and they are hesitant to MPI typically lower-mileage vehicles, especially since the customer is already unhappy about having to bring the vehicle in for service,” Nemer said.
But that’s where well-trained leaders shine.
“A good service manager is very attuned to their team and ensures an appropriate mix of work is spread around the shop to overcome these warranty jobs…,” he said.
Recalls are serving as some stores’ best customer reactivation tool.
The customer walking in for a recall appointment is often someone who hasn't been there in years or even at all, BizzyCar’s Maher told us.
"That's a customer who was gone,” Maher said. “Now they're back in your building with the opportunity to rebuild that relationship for the long term."
And, as Maher pointed out, OTA fixes don’t really reduce the need for physical repairs, since many still require hardware.
“You can't OTA a faulty fuel pump,” he said.
Why this matters: All recalls (OTA or hardware) lead to dealer-customer interactions, and if handled well, retention actually climbs.
Another upside, Maher said, is that warranty reimbursement rates are much closer to customer-pay rates than they were in old times.
"The dealers who get this right don't think of recalls and warranty work as separate from their customer-pay business," Maher said. "They think of them as the front door to customer-pay business. Every recall appointment is a reactivation opportunity."
Bottom line: Recalls are at a multi-year high, and that's true whether you're a Ford dealer working through nearly 20 million vehicles recalled in the past year or a Kia dealer managing the 141K Carnival units just issued.
The dealers capturing the upside have a system: How they communicate with customers, how they schedule, who they put on deck and where, and when to take the work mobile instead of tying up bays.
Without that, the opportunity goes to the shops that do.
