Dealership Detailing

[U.C.D.L.L.C.]

They expect everything. Full correction, carpet cleaned, leather cleaned, engine cleaned, headliner, odor removed, don't forget the headlights etc. All this for $100. Thats crazy.

[SYMAWD]

Keep in mind in addition to detailing, a lot of money goes into a used car. They have to pay technicians for frame and safety inspections plus any work and parts that have to be done. On top of that, they pay for paintless dent repair, alloy wheel restoration, getting bumpers resprayed, windshield repair if necessary, and interior restoration such as replacing torn arm rest fabric, etc. On top of all of that, they don't want to pay a lot for detailing.

[Silverhorse84]

For you guys who've done dealership work, can you describe some experiences? What did you see the most of? Are you guys just doing a 1 step cleaner/wax and letting it go down the road, or do you guys sometimes not even have to do paint correction at all? Interiors: are all of them getting extracted and full details or are most of the dealers cool with spot cleaning, vac and wipedown?

I have yet to get my feet wet with this kind of work as I am planning to get into the detailing business as a new detailer and while I am at it, I would like to dedicate only a small portion of my business. say 5-10 cars a week, to selling my services at wholesale to dealerships as I've heard that there are risks in dealing with dealers such as the dealers sometimes being slow to pay their bills and demand a lot for a little. While I'm not how true either of these two problems are, I could see how they could be real issues since a lot of dealerships rely on credit to run their operations and can sometime stretch credit terms out their limits if means effectively leveraging their operating capital to their own benefit at the expense of the vendors.

As for your question though, I've always heard that one-step paint correction is the way to go for high volume work and seems to produce a good result. I would expect that the service provided has to be good enough to address the issues that would be noticeable to a prospective buyer who may have basic to slightly better than average expectations of what a clean car should look like. Just from all the research I've done on working with dealers, I would say that spot cleaning to address glaring issues would primarily be the way to go unless it absolutely comes downs to putting in lots of "sweat equity" to make the car look decent and keep the dealer shopping with you for your services. I know my plan is to do as much spot cleaning as possible and only use tools such as extractors that will speed up cleaning time as necessary and max out the dollars earned per hour at every chance possible. If I'm wrong in that mind set though, can someone correct me as I definitely don't want be doing signature level details for quickie mart prices.

-Silverhorse84

"Sometimes being big enough to admit when you're wrong wins more customers than the expert that is right even when their wrong"

[mswerb]

If you want to be the shop that can bang out as many cars as possible in a day, go for it, Just do not get emotionally involved in the cars you are working on. Dealerships want FAST and Cheap and will probably complain about everything. Good luck.

[miad]

I love doing dealer work. they are often times less picky than regular clients. once you figure out what parts are most important and what parts less, you can knock them out in 4 hours usually. interiors very important, engine also, then just AIO the outside with Megs M66. no claying, just quickly DA and dress everything.

the large dealership I get overflow from pays flat $150, sometimes a bit more when its huge, extra dirty, or want scratches removed, etc. doing 2 full details in a day, making $300 isn't bad at all, at least where I live with very low cost of living, and doing this at my house without any shop overhead. I'll take $300 8 hour days all week ($35 an hour after gas/materials).