SYMAWD
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Spray with pressure washer, dry with chamois. That's it.
Dealer wipe downs for $1 per car?
- Thread starter fredcandetail
- Start date
Spray with pressure washer, dry with chamois. That's it.
Real Riders
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- Jul 18, 2013
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I believe what you are saying but it seems like the dealer would be worried about scratches in the paint, especially on the new cars. I seems like you would need a good insurance policy when the dealer wants all the cars repainted from all the scratches
FUNX650
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$15...for a yeoman's hour of labor---outdoors?---minus your costs of products, supplies, travel expense, lunch...are you a licensed Business...insurance(s), retirement fund, etc.
How long can you economically, as well as physically, afford to perform this type of laborious work?
Bob
ExoticAutoDetai
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Dealership gives 0 care. I have literally seen guys, with a big tank of water and drying towels. One of them goes around the lot spraying water and the other guys are right behind him drying as they go. IMO is not worth it, anything less than $5 each. For that I would be doing what is stated above. But then again is so much work for very little profit margins. "Learning from other's mistakes is cheaper."
Sent with my Note 2, from Planet Namek.
Sent with my Note 2, from Planet Namek.
Klasse Act
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Real Riders
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Bob, you are saying I need to charge $15 a car for the work I perform or you are saying $15 a hour is not enough?
SYMAWD
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I cringe every time they do it, but the cars just sit there for the most part so they accumulate very little dirt. It doesn't do as much damage as you'd think, but all they care about is how shiny it looks. It's really only done to the used cars though, at least where I work and once they are sold they do get a proper detail (not an all out show car finish, but some correction).
FUNX650
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All I did was plug the numbers you provided below, into this equation: a x b = c
Where:
a = $ amount paid per vehicle
b = # of vehicles done per hour
c = total monies paid per hour
Your friend says that's not enough.
I concur.
Bob
Real Riders
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Bob. if you did the same amount of work per car as i do, what do you think would be a fair rate to charge per car?.
FUNX650
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What do you personally think your skill and expertise is worth?
Then: Will your market allow for this rate?
Bob
Real Riders
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Bob, thanks for the info. I feel the market is $5 a car for the work I perform. My friend who just got into to detailing says I am way too low and he is going to the local dealer close to his house and ask for $10 a car plus a $1 extra if the dealer wants the tires dressed
Euphoria64
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The kind of work you do is probably worth $5-10 per car depending on your market like you said. If you're cleaning dealer cars, then the effort you're putting into each car is about right since the vehicles are more than likely not very dirty. The overall consensus from professional detailers with many years of experience is that the kind of work you're doing is not sustainable long term though. Unless you scale this kind of business up by a LOT and pay your workers peanuts, you won't make much profit I would think. Just my opinion!
FUNX650
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You know your market better than me.
And: If that's only what it will bear, for awhile...
I know you'll always be doing your best, no matter what!
Bob
PERFECTIONPLUS
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- Apr 12, 2012
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I have a ton of experience on this subject, at the first detail shop i ever worked at the owner would have us go down to the local auto row once a week and pressure wash every single car on his dealers lots. He got paid 1.50 per car just to pressure wash the vehicles NO touching them. This is very hard exhausting work and is not worth it . trust me.
HD.Detailing
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no way, $1... lol. water will cost more that that, let alone gas, insurance, equipment, etc..
Sounds like the dealer wants you to lose money instead of him.
The thought of wiping off brand new cars with the same chamois turns my stomach.
If you are going to work for him, offer to pressure wash using his electricity, his water, and blow dry them with a leaf blower. Have one guy washing while the next guy is drying the car behind. Even that ought to be 3$ per car at least, and you wont be ruining the paint jobs. Or maybe say for 5$/car you will foam it with soap first.
The thought of wiping off brand new cars with the same chamois turns my stomach.
If you are going to work for him, offer to pressure wash using his electricity, his water, and blow dry them with a leaf blower. Have one guy washing while the next guy is drying the car behind. Even that ought to be 3$ per car at least, and you wont be ruining the paint jobs. Or maybe say for 5$/car you will foam it with soap first.
Yeah, this is the only way I see a dollar a car even worth entertaining.
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SYMAWD
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Well even if you do 100 cars it probably wouldn't take over an hour just to spray them down.
fredcandetail
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- Thread starter
- #60
Thank you WISESHEPHERD for the PM as YESSSSS i want to add some commentary to this subject.
GOSH was it the hardest work we have ever done!!!! Being it was the first visit I agreed i would Spray and let 3 guys dry..... this was definately eye opening for me for a couple different reasons.
This was a hard job
It was cold, around 37 with some wind and my guys truly were miserable! AS WAS I working the pressure washer! I consider myself efficient with the PW and i was able to spray, wait - MIST about 90 cars with my 100 gallon tank! So yup about a gallon a car to knock surface dust off the hood, roof and trunk. I knew at car three that this was definately the type of work we normally do but i encouraged the guys that "its not that kind of party" in making these cars perfect. Now having said that yes i will agree that was doing a half ass job as we were turning 60 cars an hour between 3 guys wiping with MF and me on the wand. keep in mind we had 400 plus so i kept pushing the guys to move quick and not worry about leaving the cars streak free. On the average they were wringing out every car or so ......
minus a break or 4 every 45 minutes as their hands were practically numb i said in my heart that this really was torture on my good loyal employees and that this stint would be short lived .... i incented them to either continue and make more money (as i gave them XXX per car) and knowing they were hard workers they pressed on! FML
so here we go pushing 8 hours of this BS work and we finally wrap it up ...
MY GOSH was this the most exhausting $500 dollar revenue day we ever had! oh i ended up getting $1.20 per car ......
the guys enjoyed their weekend and on Monday i get reminded of "how much their back hurt, and how frozen their hands were on Friday" LOL!!
so the weather improved a bit the following week and i chose Thursday for the next visit as it was going to be in the 70's ....
Come Thursday and we start in the 50's and by 10am full sun and cars panels are hot and water is drying quickly and we are making a freakin mess wiping down cars with a mist of water and probably marring vehicles.....
i go for our first refill of water and i see one of the house detailers handwashing a recently sold vehicle and he rinsed it and then took a waterblade and quickly wiped down the car in literally a minute! I SAID ### we've been doing this all wrong all along!!!
So i get the guys loaded up and we take an 11am lunch and i run to AutoZ and pick up 3 waterblades! Well these cars were so dusty and dirty that hitting them with water and then blading them uuhhhhmmmm really kinda made a mess - literally. after 20-30 cars we went back to MF towels.
fast forward to around 3pm i notice that my pressure washer with Honda engine and commercial pump is losing pressure .... at this point i said NO MORE OF THIS and took credit for the entire lot and we split.... had i blown the PW i would have been effffn pissed so i just packed it up and called it a day!
yesterday i informed the dealer that the condition of the vehicles warranted needing more than a spray and shammy and we needed to brush down hood, glass, roof and trunk and I needed $2.50 per car ... they said yeah right and that they run 30 dealerships and they know what it takes and what to pay..... i simply said the necessary amount of work we needed to do on each car so that we felt we were ding a good job couldnt be done for $1.20 per car..... they said Fred all we are asking you to do is spray them and wipe them .... THEY CLEARLY DIDNT CARE WHAT THE END RESULT what looked like
will i do this again ..... mmaannnnan at $2.50 a car we'd bill $1000 for the day .. MAYBE i would but with 2 more bodies and my second trailer for rinsing but i know the second a PW died i'd be up sh!t creek.
Secondly my guys really slaved that day BIG TIME ... wiping down that many cars is tuff on the body and like someone said it truly is a young mans game ... my guys are in their 30's and we took an bottom whipping!
GOSH was it the hardest work we have ever done!!!! Being it was the first visit I agreed i would Spray and let 3 guys dry..... this was definately eye opening for me for a couple different reasons.
This was a hard job
It was cold, around 37 with some wind and my guys truly were miserable! AS WAS I working the pressure washer! I consider myself efficient with the PW and i was able to spray, wait - MIST about 90 cars with my 100 gallon tank! So yup about a gallon a car to knock surface dust off the hood, roof and trunk. I knew at car three that this was definately the type of work we normally do but i encouraged the guys that "its not that kind of party" in making these cars perfect. Now having said that yes i will agree that was doing a half ass job as we were turning 60 cars an hour between 3 guys wiping with MF and me on the wand. keep in mind we had 400 plus so i kept pushing the guys to move quick and not worry about leaving the cars streak free. On the average they were wringing out every car or so ......
minus a break or 4 every 45 minutes as their hands were practically numb i said in my heart that this really was torture on my good loyal employees and that this stint would be short lived .... i incented them to either continue and make more money (as i gave them XXX per car) and knowing they were hard workers they pressed on! FML
so here we go pushing 8 hours of this BS work and we finally wrap it up ...
MY GOSH was this the most exhausting $500 dollar revenue day we ever had! oh i ended up getting $1.20 per car ......
the guys enjoyed their weekend and on Monday i get reminded of "how much their back hurt, and how frozen their hands were on Friday" LOL!!
so the weather improved a bit the following week and i chose Thursday for the next visit as it was going to be in the 70's ....
Come Thursday and we start in the 50's and by 10am full sun and cars panels are hot and water is drying quickly and we are making a freakin mess wiping down cars with a mist of water and probably marring vehicles.....
i go for our first refill of water and i see one of the house detailers handwashing a recently sold vehicle and he rinsed it and then took a waterblade and quickly wiped down the car in literally a minute! I SAID ### we've been doing this all wrong all along!!!
So i get the guys loaded up and we take an 11am lunch and i run to AutoZ and pick up 3 waterblades! Well these cars were so dusty and dirty that hitting them with water and then blading them uuhhhhmmmm really kinda made a mess - literally. after 20-30 cars we went back to MF towels.
fast forward to around 3pm i notice that my pressure washer with Honda engine and commercial pump is losing pressure .... at this point i said NO MORE OF THIS and took credit for the entire lot and we split.... had i blown the PW i would have been effffn pissed so i just packed it up and called it a day!
yesterday i informed the dealer that the condition of the vehicles warranted needing more than a spray and shammy and we needed to brush down hood, glass, roof and trunk and I needed $2.50 per car ... they said yeah right and that they run 30 dealerships and they know what it takes and what to pay..... i simply said the necessary amount of work we needed to do on each car so that we felt we were ding a good job couldnt be done for $1.20 per car..... they said Fred all we are asking you to do is spray them and wipe them .... THEY CLEARLY DIDNT CARE WHAT THE END RESULT what looked like
will i do this again ..... mmaannnnan at $2.50 a car we'd bill $1000 for the day .. MAYBE i would but with 2 more bodies and my second trailer for rinsing but i know the second a PW died i'd be up sh!t creek.
Secondly my guys really slaved that day BIG TIME ... wiping down that many cars is tuff on the body and like someone said it truly is a young mans game ... my guys are in their 30's and we took an bottom whipping!