Before retirement, I had sold auto detailing franchises. We offered mobile detailing trailers, and truck and van configurations, as well as detail shops, and giant eight-bay detailing centers. One thing that I always found fascinating was that folks that didn’t have a lot of money, immediately set their goal to running a full on 8-bay detailing center. The reality was, this was nothing more than pure ego talking and often I tried to talk them out of that. Let me explain why.
You see, running a mobile detailing trailer is a one or two man operation, it’s a simple business to run, it pays well, and although it is hard work, and often labor-intensive to work all day detailing cars, it is a fun profession, and you can do it by taking a friend with you, one other worker, or employee. When you run an 8-bay detailing center, you spend your entire day doing management, running the shop, motivating employees, ordering products, and dealing with customers.
In fact, it seems as if your day is never done, there’s always more to do, and the next day starts, and it’s chaos, albeit controlled chaos all over again. When you run a small auto detailing business, you can unhook your detailing trailer at the end of the day, and go home and relax after you drop off your worker. Most of your client scheduling is done on your smart phone these days, and there’s just not much to it. No, you probably cannot make over $150,000 per year running a single detail trailer.
Yes, I’ve heard stories where people have been able to do that, but not consistently year-over-year, and when I hear stories like that, it often sounds to me like an exaggeration, because after being in business for 27 years I can’t recall that scenario with any of our own franchisees, and they pretty much dominated their market in every city we were in. What I’m saying to you is this; if you are looking to buy a mobile car wash, mobile detailing trailer, or a fixed site detailing business, then you need to check your ego at the door, and get the right business that is the right size for you.
Now if you have your MBA, or have been a manager of a large auto service company before, and you think you can handle and eight-bay detail shop, and if you have the proper capital behind you or the investors to make that happen, then by all means go for it. But if not you’re better off to keep your lifestyle simple, keep yourself happy, and keep yourself in a steady stream and flow of happy customers and positive cash flow. Please consider all this and think on it, and please leave your ego out of it, trust me on this.