Midwest association now accepting 'virtual members'

The Midwest Auto Care Alliance (MWACA) has expanded its membership mandate to include shops throughout North America.

Shops that lie outside of MWACA’s original six-state territory (Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Arkansas) can now join as virtual members, with immediate access to the same training and benefits that current MWACA shop members receive.

The association, which hosts the annual Vision HiTech Training conference in Kansas City, has already fielded calls from Canadian shops wanting to participate in MWACA training and benefits. Executive director Sheri Hamilton said Canadian shops are welcome to become virtual members.

“We look forward to expanding our offering of benefits and programs which have made our association so popular and successful,” she said.

Repair facilities can join MWACA for $275 a year. Additional information about MWACA membership can be found at www.mwaca.org/join.

MWACA’s leadership voted unanimously to make the membership change at a recent MWACA Leadership Summit at the end of August.

“This change in membership came as a result of numerous inquiries from shops who didn’t have training and chapter meetings locally,” said Tim Davison, MWACA president and owner of Chumbley’s Auto Care in Indianola, Iowa. “They knew what MWACA had to offer but they were outside our area. The current environment has made virtual training and communication more acceptable to the shops in our industry.”

Virtual membership benefits will include auto parts rebate programs, health insurance, early Vision registration, free ACT Auto Staffing account, and a print subscription to the association’s quarterly publication, MWACA Magazine. In addition to these and other money-saving benefits, virtual members will have access to the MWACA Training Portal, free online training provided through the MWACA eXchange events, and other virtual training and roundtables.

Beginning as a seven-county Kansas City chapter of the Automotive Service Association (ASA) in the late 1980s, it grew into ASA Missouri/Kansas, and continued to grow and expand into a six-state affiliate known as ASA-Midwest. It separated from the national organization in September 2018 to become an independent regional association.