Jeffrey Liaw
Chief Executive Officer at Copart
Thank you. Good evening, and welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this evening. We're pleased to report our results for the third quarter of fiscal 2024. I'll provide some brief comments about the business before handing the call to Leah to review our financial results, and then she and I will take your questions.
First, turning to our Insurance business. We have recently concluded our 24th Annual US Insurance Advisory Board Meeting in New York City. Every year, we gather in-person to solicit feedback from our clients about the opportunities, and challenges they face, which in turn inform our service offerings, tech deployments and capital investment programs. Some of the priorities we addressed this year included a range of levers available to them to address escalating claims cycle times and advance charges in particular.
We discussed at length our best-in-class auction liquidity fueled by our exclusively online marketplace, which itself has been refined repeatedly, since its launch in 2003. Our uniquely global buyer base and the auction intelligence that results from the application of machine learning tools to the data from literally billions of interactions with sellers and members that correspond with tens of millions of vehicles sold. And in the spirit of our shared success, we hosted this event to coincide with the celebration of our 30th anniversary as a public company and together with our clients, we rang the NASDAQ opening bell.
We continue to grow our business with our insurance clients. As anticipated, new and used vehicle prices have decreased somewhat steeply in recent days, while repair costs remain elevated, driving a strong and continued recovery in total loss frequency. During our third fiscal quarter, we observed a 14% year-over-year decline in the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index. And though ISS Fast Track reported a slight softening in accident severity of 1.3% or so for the fourth calendar quarter of 2023, accident severity is still up almost 9% when compared to the same quarter two years prior. The combination of these two forces decreasing used vehicle values and elevated repair costs due to vehicle complexity and labor challenges in the repair industry has driven a recovery in total loss frequency back to pre-pandemic levels.
For CCC, total loss frequency for the first calendar quarter 2024 was 21.1% across all loss categories, up approximately 150 basis points versus the same time a year ago. We believe that, long run trends continue to make repairing vehicles less economically attractive to insurance carriers and totaling vehicles more economically attractive to them and the total loss frequency will continue its steady long-term path upwards. Our US insurance volumes increased 6.8% year-over-year as we have lapsed the effects of units from Hurricane Ian a year ago.
Given the increasing frequency and magnitude of storm related activity, we're somewhat hesitant to provide, quote, normalized growth trends that exclude the effect of storms. But it was a modest reduction in year-over-year growth as a result of the Ian vehicles sold a year ago. And then to the theme more generally of our response to catastrophic events. We responded to multiple smaller weather events so far this year and last, they did not in the aggregate approach the magnitude of major catastrophic events like Hurricanes Ian, Ida, and Harvey.
Nonetheless, these comparatively smaller storms affect communities across the United States, including floods in the Houston area and Tornado outbreaks in the central plains. Our investments into our catastrophic team and infrastructure have allowed us to respond efficiently to our customer's needs throughout these events and underscore our contributions to promoting resilience for the communities we serve in the face of evolving climate change trends.
We note also that major research groups are predicting a serious storm season ahead, predicting as many as 31 named storms in 2024, and an increase of over 50% year-over-year. As a result, our focus remains on our proactive preparedness, investing in our teams on the ground, our logistics technology, our fleet of vehicles, and of course our dedicated acreage reserve for handling the peak capacity needs to come with major events. On a similar note, outside the United States, we're leveraging our catastrophic response capabilities to support our clients in Southern Brazil and in the Persian Gulf who continue to experience the effects of ongoing historical flooding.
I'll pause for a minute on our non-insurance business as well. We continue to grow our blue car business, which serves our bank and finance fleet and rental segment partners. In the third fiscal quarter, we observed year-over-year growth of 23% to almost 24%. Likewise, our dealer sales volume, a combination of our Copart dealer services business unit and NPA, our power sports auction platform, increased unit volume sold by almost 18%, all told our US non-insurance, automotive and dealer volume, excluding low value and wholesale units increased 19% year-over-year. Our growth is the result of our commitment to customer service and our auction liquidity.
With each additional vehicle, we earn the right to sell. We increase the attractiveness of our auction platform to the world's automotive buyers, drawing still more members to our auctions and to the benefit of all of our sellers, new and old. I'll conclude with a reflection, brief reflection on our first 30 years as a publicly traded company. Perhaps the single most distinctive characteristic of Copart today is our investment horizon. Even as we celebrate our 30th anniversary, our minds quickly shift to the work ahead of us to ensure a prosperous celebration with our clients of our 40th, 50th, and 60th as well. We'll continue to invest as we always have in our people, our technology and our real estate to deliver excellent results to our clients worldwide.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Leah, our CFO.
