Volume washing at Marina (help request)

[Calendyr]

Hello guys,

I was offered to wash cars at the local marina this summer.

It would be once a week, on Saturdays from 7:30 AM to about 5 PM and the owner of the marina says that in the past the guys did about 20 vehicles per day.

The offers they had in the previous years was 25$ for exterior wash and wax, quick interior (Vaccum, windows, wipedown).

I am thinking that doing an ONR wash with a Spray wax drying aid would take about 30 minutes and interior an other 30 minutes. So 25$/hour.

Does that sound reasonable?

So the questions I have are for people offering this type of service:

1. I would need help to knock out that type of volume. I am planning of offering 12$ per hour to start with and possible adjustment upward if cars can be done quicker and person is dedicated. Does that sound reasonable?

2. Any tricks or tips regarding any aspect of this service?

I am not planning to make much money doing this. I see this as an opportunity to upsell detailing services to people with very nice vehicles. I have been to this marina many times and most of the boat owners have expensive luxyry cars and I have seen some exotics there as well. So I am looking at this more as a marketing opportunity than a profit making venture.

[sudsmobile]

We work at a local hospital once a week. We've been doing it for about 3 months. We're reliable, we show up before 7am and leave when there's no more work to do. It's not great money, we average probably around $360-410 per week, but that's through the winter. We're hoping once the weather settles down and the days get longer we may be able to up that. We offer a few basic services and we average anywhere from 8-11 vehicles per day. Like you said, we do it to stay busy, get some guaranteed income every week and introduce higher end services to local customers. It's worked pretty well, we've gotten a few big jobs out of it. We always let people know "hey, you could really use a clay and seal" or "we could definitely take care of those headlights for you" or "you're starting to get some light oxidation on the hood, you might want to have us address that before it gets much worse." People are usually pretty appreciative that you're letting them know that something really needs to be done. We've thought about bringing somebody in at minimum wage during the summer, but I'm almost thinking I'd need to be running two complete rigs to make it work. Not a deal breaker. I have a second pressure washer and a second vacuum. I could throw another 100 gallon take in the back of our SUV and we could run two pressure washers at once. If we had enough cars, with three people and two rigs running, we could probably do $700 a day during the spring/summer/early fall.

I mean I started this company for my college aged son to do while he lives at home and takes a lot of his GE college courses so he can make some good coin and not have to slave away at a minimum wage Subway or McDonald's type job. So far, we have managed to get a ton of business as a brand new company and I've kind of taken over the day to day because it's gotten much bigger than we thought it would. I sometimes forget I'm retired and he would be happy getting 30% of $750/week.

[Cosmin]

did you ask yourself why the old guy is not there anymore?

stick with your prices or you will run out of juice and burn. you will be better if you drive the cars to car wash..... 25$ in and out ?car , is not even pay to load and unload your equipment from van. than you end up rushing and do $hity job to get all cars and ruin your reputation,.

about helpers... i had up to 8 guys in the crew for volume or events, but i charge 70-90$ per car and in some cased exterior only.
on the paper all numbers looks in plus , but at end of the day , you barely cover the gas and make less than your helper/
and... i am not fan of .99 in price list on your site. be upfront with your prices and you can get more than .99c

you can get in marina without to be called "the 25$ detail guy". so ask what you worth.

[Calendyr]

did you ask yourself why the old guy is not there anymore?

stick with your prices or you will run out of juice and burn. you will be better if you drive the cars to car wash..... 25$ in and out ?car , is not even pay to load and unload your equipment from van. than you end up rushing and do $hity job to get all cars and ruin your reputation,.

about helpers... i had up to 8 guys in the crew for volume or events, but i charge 70-90$ per car and in some cased exterior only.
on the paper all numbers looks in plus , but at end of the day , you barely cover the gas and make less than your helper/
and... i am not fan of .99 in price list on your site. be upfront with your prices and you can get more than .99c

you can get in marina without to be called "the 25$ detail guy". so ask what you worth.

I have been hesitant to take it because of the price. I usually charge 40$ per hour for my work so charging almost half is not something I am too excited about. On the other hand, this is not gonna be detailing, just car washing. I think I will go visit some hand car wash this week and see what they charge.

Using Yvan Lacroix's method it is possible to do a very good job washing the car in only a few minutes. Forget the whole foam bath and all that. Just do a quick pressure rinse (less than 5 mins) then ONR clean. Interior would be super fast, quick vacuum not looking for perfection, windows and quick wipe of dashboard and surfaces. I am thinking 45-mins to an hour to do the car.

I think I will make a package for 40$. If people are use to pay 25$, 90$ is not reasonable. At 40$ per hour it's my normal rate and I don't have to go anywhere between washes. If I hire someone for 12-15$ per hour, I can improve that as well as long as we are busy all day. The owner mentionned 20 cars per day. I have no idea if that is true or not. So let's say 10. That's 400$ for the day if I am alone. If I hire someone then it's less obviously. At 20 car per day it becomes more lucrative than my typical detailing day even with an employe. That's 800$ for the day minus say 150$ for the employe. I don't make 650$ day that often. My average is more in the 350-400$ range. Also this kind of work is not expensive to do, no expensive polishes, sandpapers, chemicals or products to use. ONR is super affordable, and even if I use Optimum Car Wax, it's not gonna be a big expense either.

As for my website, I learned long ago that doing the 9.99$ at the end of prices is important mentallly to improve sales. What ever price it is. This is how pretty much every business calculate prices except for Wal-Mart and Costco. Never heard a client complain about it.

[Calendyr]

Sent the proposal to them. Offered 2 packages one at 30$/40$ (car/SUV) and one at 40$/50$ (Car/SUV) this is Canadian Dollars so think 25% less in US$.

Will see what they say. I decided to start alone and see how it goes. Don't want to hire someone and have very little demand.

For those of you doing this, do you have a sign you put up so people can see you are offering the service? I am thinking of making a folding sign I can set up near the spot where I will wash the cars. Any advice?

Also, do you use a sign up card? I was thinking of having half sheet (8.5" X 5.5") with package selection, method of payment, personnal and car info. If you are using one, can you contact me in private message please, I would definatelly like to see a copy.

So, as far as material go, here is what i am thinking, would love to hear your input on this:

Power washer
Foam Cannon
Buckets with grit guards
Lake Country Blue Foam Sponges (or Optimum Big Red Sponges)
Microfibers to wash
Microfibers to dry
Metro Sidekick to dry mirrors and crevices
Vacuum

Products would be super simple:
Optimum no-rinse and wax for hanb washes
Meguiar's Gold Class shampoo if they choose to have pressure wash only (foam cannon)
Optimum no-rinse and shine for cleaning windows and wipedown of the interior
Optimum Car Wax for drying and waxing the vehicle
Meguiar's All-Season Dressing for tires and trims
Offering a choice of perfum: Febreze, New-Car Scent, Vanilla (or nothing if they prefer)

Anything you would change?

[sudsmobile]

The place where we work allows us to place two large signs. We use the banner type signs that attach to the tension style frame. They're a little bigger than a person. We set up one outside near a popular entrance/exit and one in the lobby. I know it's not huge money but it's steady, there's no driving involved, it's nice to have customer beating your door down one day a week. With the weather turning nice after a month of iffy weather, we did $600 there yesterday. Monday is typically a very slow day for us, so it's nice to have the work. We may not do it forever, we may not be doing it six months from now, but for now it's pretty decent.

[SWETM]

I would switch gold class to Megs Hyper Wash. Then I would look into if I got more volume for the price with Ech2o QD dilution 1:20 to OCW or any other WW wash in QD dilution. The benefit for this would be when only PW with the foamcannon and you get more lubrication and cleaning ability from a WW QD when drying with it. From Ech2o you get a great gloss too.

[Calendyr]

I would switch gold class to Megs Hyper Wash. Then I would look into if I got more volume for the price with Ech2o QD dilution 1:20 to OCW or any other WW wash in QD dilution. The benefit for this would be when only PW with the foamcannon and you get more lubrication and cleaning ability from a WW QD when drying with it. From Ech2o you get a great gloss too.

You are using too many abreviations even for me LOL! I purchased Echo20 and I have a new bottle of Reload. I was planning on making a drying aid using 1 ounce of each mixed with 20 Onces of Distilled water (someone on the forum suggested this mix). I have no doubt this is a good drying aid. I don't think it will match the durability of Optimum Car Wax though. My bottle says 5 months durability. I am guessing the Echo20/Reload mix will give maybe a month durability.

Cost wise you are certainly right. I am calculating it will cost me about 3$ to mix a 22 ounce bottle of Echo20 and Reload vs 20$ for a 17 ounce bottle of OCW. The one thing is that it will very likelly take more product to do the same job. I normally use Reload alone (undilluted) and I do 2 sprays per panel on my microfiber towel. OCW is 1 spray per panel according to Yvan Lacroix. Even so, a lot cheaper to use. I thanks for the tip, I might very well do that.

As for Hyper Wash, the problem is that it's not available locally. I would have to order it from Autogeek and pay insane shipping cost. So any saving it might give me over Gold Class would be lost. I can get a bottle of Gold Class for about 20$ at the local Canadian Tires, if memory serves it's a 60 ounce bottle (or just about) : 1,89L.

Autogeek charges 50$ to ship to Canada. And in the past on heavy orders it went up very quickly (once paid almost 200$ shipping). So liquids are not a good deal for me on AG. There are some products I have no choice to order here, but for something like a shampoo, it's just not worth it.