You Offer Mobile Detailing and ?????????

Austin M detail

Austin M detail

New member
I decided to start this thread because I wanted to get a better idea of what people (other Mobile Detailers) are doing in addition to Detailing & Car Washing.



The questions I have are......



Is it beneficial for you (personally) to offer more services to your Customer base?



Do you notice a difference is earnings?



Are you able to juggle many mobile services, and still stay sane?



How about you share some of the added services here, you might give people ideas, but you just may shine the light on something that might not be a good idea for another!



From personal experience.....



I have ran a Mobile Detailing business since 2005, and I have tried the following:



~ Professional Pressure Washing (high end rig, invested $10K, made about $6K)



~ VIN Etching, paid $800 for the Kit, I've done 1 vehicle in 3 years time, so I lost $730........



~ Minor Interior Repairs, still do Cigarette burn repairs in Carpet, and dye, but thats it!



~ Windshield Chip & Crack Repairs, at first I wanted to give up, I invested $1300 into a high end kit, it sat and collected dust for 4 months. I then got off my butt and started advertising, and joined several Insurnace networks and the jobs came rolling in.....VERY HAPPY I STARTED THIS, I STILL DO THEM TILL THIS DAY!



~ Auto Glass Replacements, it's been up and down. I have 2 techs that do the replacements for me, I would say that 60 to 70% of the calls I get, people are just trying to find the cheapest rate out there!

I say if you do it for yourself, you can charge less, but if you're trying to pay someone and still make $$, it may not turn out to be as profitable as you think!



Thanks for looking and I look forward to reading some others experiences.......[/I]
 
I'm not a pro detailer. I do some side jobs for money but I would consider PDR as one of the more profitable things to offer....that is of course, if your trained at it or willing to invest in the training and tools to do it. Doesn't look the easiest thing in the world but you can make 300-600 in a few hours which aint bad at all.
 
dublifecrisis said:
I'm not a pro detailer. I do some side jobs for money but I would consider PDR as one of the more profitable things to offer....that is of course, if your trained at it or willing to invest in the training and tools to do it. Doesn't look the easiest thing in the world but you can make 300-600 in a few hours which aint bad at all.
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Yes, PDR is the way to go if you're a patient person, and as you said, have the time and $$$ to invest.



There are a lot of the PDR people out there that are travelers/Storm Chasers.



Everything they do revolves around PDR....



They usually have a really nice setup, and some of them have high dollar motorhomes pulling an additional trailer with all of their equipment!



We had a Hail storm here about 3 weeks ago, in my area, and it seems like on every corner there is a Canopy set up for PDR.......



Roofing/Construction/PDR/Auto Glass.........there are out of towners everywhere!



I checked into the training/equipment for PDR, and for travel, room and board, tools, and school, it was going to cost nearly $10K for 3 weeks worth of training!



JJH
 
Are you unable to make a satisfactory income by detailing alone? If you had a shop, and you could have one PDR guy, one windshield guy, one interior repair guy, that makes sense. I'm just not sure how much sense it makes to offer other services that 1) you may not do often enough to become adequately proficient at and 2) you won't be able to get your ROI in a reasonable period.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Are you unable to make a satisfactory income by detailing alone? If you had a shop, and you could have one PDR guy, one windshield guy, one interior repair guy, that makes sense. I'm just not sure how much sense it makes to offer other services that 1) you may not do often enough to become adequately proficient at and 2) you won't be able to get your ROI in a reasonable period.
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No, I'm actually pretty busy most of the time, personally.



I guess what I'm looking for is.....



Are there others out there that have thought about adding additional services, whether it be a personal desire or a customers request (or many for that matter), and for those that have done so, whats your feedback?



For me, most additional services that I have ever added were because of customer requests, except the VIN Etching, that was me trying to be cool and offer something that NO BODY else did (so I thought), and I found out that the Fire Department offers it for FREE a few times a year!



My biggest loss would have to come from the Pressure washing setup, I lost thousands of $'s on it, and I got over.....kind of!



Learned my lesson and moved on. There are some areas that a particular business will do well, and there are some that will fall like a ton of bricks. There are many different reasons....Location, Competition, Experience, Prices, and who you know........but ultimately, it's LOCATION!



JJH
 
not mobile but I used to have a master mechanic on site with me at my location. Worked out great when dealing with the dealer lot cars. He'd fix them I'd clean them and they were ready for sale without a bunch of different trips. I didn't want to continue with low level dealer cars being my bread and butter so I left the location (he's still there) and I'm working on uping the game so to speak. I had an offer on a 10 bay location and I thought about adding services like window tinting, PDR, chip repair and upholstry. I need to find a team of other people in those feilds that would be willing to go in on the location. But I think the "All in one stop" has it's appeal to alot of the masses out there. It just all depends on what's selling in your area right now. In my area not much is moving.
 
I turned my 2 car garage into a detail setup... And I tell ya it's not easy cramming an entire detail shop into a 2 car garage. But I have nicer eqipment than any other "Mobile" guy around me LOL. I tossed out a few more emails today at locations that looked promising as well. I don't mind my own garage but I really don't like everyone I deal with knowing where I live ya know. They may have nice cars but you just don't know if they're nuts or not. I will do mobile detailing if really needed (like the Caymen S I did) but my equipment I have now wasn't bought because it was very portable. So it's a little difficult but I can do it and will do it if the job is right.
 
So Jake (and I hope this is on-topic since it's kinda related), despite you talking about a setup with "services like window tinting, PDR, chip repair and upholstery", are you really looking to be more of a one-man, low volume shop now (with your new Bright Dynamics philosophy), or do you still want to have a multiple-employee setup?
 
LOL... Now letting the cat out of the bag before it's ready isn't right. For right now I'm going to be micro focusing on uping my game. There are a few guys on here recently that have really opened my eyes and I need to raise my own bar a bit. Not that I find fault in what I do I just want to do more on a level this area hasn't seen before. But I have something rather huge in the works that may (hopefully) materialize in the fall/winter time frame that will allow me to incorprate the other ideas that I mentioned. Which is also why it's just "Bright Dynamics" right now the second part of the name will come as soon as certian things get signed and legalized.
 
My plans and what I do now on the sides is detailing but plan to add windshield repair and basic dying and cigarette burn repairs for the interior. I also do paint and body work and custom motorcycles and golf carts and even restore old cars. My plan though is to get my detailing deal going full time doing that and the windshield and interior repair. Keeping it simple and then if someone needs me to come to their home to do bumper repairs and fix and paint them then I will. As for the custom work I do, that is on the side and comes in at times so much that I have to turn it all down so that is great for slow times on detailing. I recently did a custom Harley by chopping it up, body work and painting it. I am getting ready to possibly do an old 70's Stagg car (two of them) so that is great. I like doing restos and custom work once in a while. It's what I started out doing with hot rods and custom classics. Right now with these times, everything is slow, especially when you only offer ONE type of service but if you do many and do many of those services very good then you can keep fairly busy.
 
WINDOW TINTING!! I learned how to do this while in high school 7 years ago while i was working part time at a performance shop. Now when my customers get new cars and i detail them i always make it a point to bring up tinting. You wouldnt believe the response i get, most people want them, or want darker.
 
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