On Monday morning, the vast majority of Location Services (LS) Direct Repossessions division were given their walking papers as the company announced their intention of closing this element of their operations. This decision comes after 18 months of their reported struggles to maintain their company owned nationwide repossession offices under unprecedented pandemic moratoriums and low repossession volumes. The very same issues that have been closing agencies nationwide over the same period. All clients were to be advised by 48 hours from Monday’s announcement.
Also announced, was that some strategic legacy partners from some of the acquired companies who had been serving Location Services as per their contracts, will be retained. Also announced was the opportunity for some of earlier acquired agency owners to repurchase their companies. To date, only two are known. Patrick Dunleavy will be repurchasing his family’s upstate NY agency, T-CAR, which was founded by his grandfather, Edward Dunleavy in 1959. Brad Webb is reportedly also repurchasing Premier Adjusters in Texas.
While closing all other agencies, TCAR will continue to run under Location Services management, but they claim to remain positive on the industry’s future and will be maintaining their licenses to reenter the industry should market conditions improve. Unaffected are LS’s Repossession Forwarding Division which they intend to increase the development of which includes their skip, recovery, remarketing, transportation, locksmithing and title services as well as their LPR divisions. While only having moved to Michigan in 2019, they have reportedly already moved their headquarters to Indianapolis.
For all of us who have been watching the pandemic and post-pandemic drought take its toll on repossession agencies of all sizes across the nation over the last 18 months, when you see an organization of the size, scale and leadership and financial backing of Location Services come to the same conclusion as everyone else, you know things are bad. Perhaps worse than bad. Perhaps completely broken.
Perhaps so broken that when the damn breaks, not if, but when, the very same lenders who broke the camel’s backs and began pushing it over the edge years ago, will be the very same ones who are unable to find qualified agents to meet their needs. While not by definition ironic, it will at very least be some form of poetic justice.
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