starting mobile car sevice business

Premier_2

Whiteknight wrote: »

If I'm reading this right I can see a potential problem with the weather, as it appears that you will visit and carry out the work cutting down on your costs by not having to rent premises.

What would you do if someone calls you and you quote for a job for example take that full service on a 1.4 Clio for £60 you mentioned, you book it and on the day you turn up at the customer home you find the car parked on the street and it its pi##ing down - customer has no garage or car port?

Professional mobile mechanics usually have some kind of cover/marquee/tent that they put up and drive the vehicle into - they too are not cheap.

They also usually have a fully equiped transit (like the AA have)

pitkin2020

lilys-dad wrote: »

thats the point of not charging the earth.

im also only going to do it part time ie after work and week ends ( i work mornings so finish at 2 pm mon - friday) if i do 5 per week at say £20ph max thats £100 pw extra if it only takes 1 hour

ive just had a look at some insurance, £200 pa pli, car ins extra £300 pa for business use, might start off with just word of mouth marketing.

lokking more and more appeling.

Thats the problem though you are looking at this as just extra cash on top of your earnings, which is fine if thats all you ever want it to be.

Others have already raised good points about the costings so no need to cover that.

£20 PH sounds attractive but after you have taken your expenses out you may aswell just do over time in your current job. If you screw up one or two jobs your profit margin for the next several jobs will be wiped out. I'm not saying your going to screw anything up but you will have customers who will require you to go back on occasion to adjust/redo something, which you will have to go back to.

Even after being taxed the max and your VAT your under the £15 PH mark!! You would need roughly 40 jobs at that rate just to break even on your insurance for your vehicle and PLI.

Brodiebobs

My DH is a qualified, time served mechanic, his garage does a full service and clean for £50 plus parts, usually around £100 all in depending on the car, this also includes pick up and drop off if required.

This is a very tight margin, but they did it as business is slow at the minute.

TBH i think you have to look into the prices more, as others have mentioned you'd need a full tool kit, the liability and business use insurance, fuel traveling to do the work, advertising (although word of mouth, facebook, twitter etc are free!) Plus as you already have a job i assume you'll have to pay additional NIC and tax, plus all the hassle if anything goes wrong. I know my DH has alot of people try it on, eg he did a service and two weeks later the customer crashed the car, they accused the garage of tampering with the brakes (which of course dont get touched during a service) and he had to instruct solicitors, plus he had two other mechanics there to back up his word, which you wont have if your alone.

Not trying to put you off just when DH started the garage it was all worked out on paper... but alot different (more expensive!) when it was up and running.

s_b

a waste licence will also be required due to you carrying waste
what preparation would you set in place in case you spilled oil at persons home/business and it was near an open drain?
how will you lift the car and comply with your own risk assessments if land is only rough or soft tarmac?
how will you protect the public from your work?

im not being awkward im explaining pitfalls of working in an open environment

think carefully and as stated this is before you do better costings as people are now so aware of the pound in their pocket and what they want from it and basic serviceing seems to be at the bottom of their ladder after buns cakes and more buns

pendulum

You could probably get car jobs from busy local garages who would like to offload some of the work to you. If they charge £25 an hour labour to the customer, and you take £10 or £15, they're still making money off that job for doing nothing, and they can be working on another job for £25 an hour. I think they'd want to see some qualifications OR proven work history though.

*smurfy*

For the prices you want to charge I would say keep it as a word of mouth/cash in hand extra work.Also having no qualifcations you couldnt charge anymore,and would also I'd say have to very careful fixing peoples cars,cause if something goes wrong and having charged some one and gave a recipt the comeback is going to be on you! Where if your doing just friends of friends they know what they are getting.
I have a friend that is mobile and it was no way cheap to set up,and he isnt cheap either.But I use him because he's good,its convent,and more important i trust him having been ripped off by garages in past.

lilys-dad

thanks for all the advice.

had a quick chat with a very old friend of mine who ownes a garage. who has offerd me a place there with him when he has lots of sevices ect to do. We used to work together when he just qualified from collage. I was a tyre monkey at the time
ill be paid by the job and im going to have a quick chat with the local collage to see if i can use this experiance to gain a qualification
as it goes with the no qualifications i have time served in garages,tyre & exhaust centers (a local ats type place where i worked for 5 years but left because thay wouldnt put me through collage. did a lot of discs and pads there) and mobile fitting of cars, vans, lorrys and motorbikes.
Did some work with a local drift works team, ecu re-mapping on a rolling road. so experiance isnt a problem.
£50 for parts for a clio service kit. dont know who your supplier is but you need to find some one else. I can get the parts for a max £40 next day delivery.

but it was just an idear. think i might just carry on doing what im doing for now.

paulwf

lilys-dad wrote: »

ill be paid by the job and im going to have a quick chat with the local collage to see if i can use this experiance to gain a qualification
as it goes with the no qualifications i have time served in garages,tyre & exhaust centers (a local ats type place where i worked for 5 years but left because thay wouldnt put me through collage. did a lot of discs and pads there) and mobile fitting of cars, vans, lorrys and motorbikes.
Did some work with a local drift works team, ecu re-mapping on a rolling road. so experiance isnt a problem.

It would be worth checking what qualifications "tick the right boxes" (sorry for using a horrible phrase) in terms of compliance. Here's an example. I used to work in the cycle trade and there were lots of bike mechanics with years and years of experience. Now in theory if a mistake was made and the case went to court the first thing a judge would ask is "what are your qualifications". A 16 year old that had been on the relevant course may know ten times less but it would appear they know much more in compliance terms as you have a record of training and examination.

So much now is about compliance and box ticking, for example environmental health officers don't observe how food is actually handled, they put much more emphasis on food hygiene certificates, temperature logs and daily diaries.

Get the qualification that is best recognised by customers, trade bodies and most importantly will cover your insurance and be recognised if ever any issues arise.

Savvy_Sue

*smurfy* wrote: »

For the prices you want to charge I would say keep it as a word of mouth/cash in hand extra work.

If that's a suggestion not to declare it to HMRC, I hope the OP will disregard because that would be very bad advice ...

lilys-dad wrote: »

had a quick chat with a very old friend of mine who ownes a garage. who has offerd me a place there with him when he has lots of sevices ect to do. We used to work together when he just qualified from collage. I was a tyre monkey at the time
ill be paid by the job and im going to have a quick chat with the local collage to see if i can use this experiance to gain a qualification

I have to say that this sounds like a much better idea: you'll have access to specialist tools should you need them, you won't (hopefully) be allowed to do anything that's beyond your competence, and if it's someone who is prepared to help you progress in this area then that's a win-win situation. Hope it works out.

texranger

Premier wrote: »

Probably a small fortune if you can get it.

No formal qualifications and you are going to be servicing the brakes on cars! :eek:

Not mine you won't be

same here if your not a qualified mechanic you wont touch my vehicles and if word got around that you are not qualified then you wont get customers so end of business