Possible career change

jonn127

jonn127

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Someone I know recently purchased a 9 bay car wash and wants to close two of the bays and open a detail shop and has contacted me about the possibility of running it.
Currently I do full details for friends and family and referrals only, thus I spend about 4 hours on the smallest of cars cause I do it as more of a hobby. I need to come up with some packages to offer and in doing so speed up my processes without sacrificing quality.
I spend a lot of time on interiors and think this is where most the time can be saved. What are some of the products/equipment that can get an interior done and done quickly. Do steamers save a lot of time? Example only, if I spend an hour on an interior, what is a way to cut that to 30 minutes? I currently use an assortment of products, brushes, but I figure there has to be a way of speeding this up.
 
A lot of people swear by the tornado for saving time on interior work. I only have a tornado blow out gun and love it. My interior work is almost always the same. The amount of time spent on the paint is where I log serious hours.
 
What's the opinion for carpets? Steamers or extractors?
 
If money is not a huge thing and it's a business venture then get whatever you need to speed things up as far as equipment. I would only suggest to use as many cross over products as possible. Like waterless, detail spray, clay lube, interior detailer all in one products like Ultima waterless + or Garry Dean's Detail Juice. Get some Car Pro fast glass towels. Try and have a minimum amount of product on hand. Meaning don't have 3 different wheel cleaners, glass cleaners or APC. Find what works and stick with it. You have to accept that the bulk of your detailing up front is going to be production detailing. Get them in and out. Once you build a client base is when you get the longer higher end jobs. Negotiate bulk product pricing with companies if you can. Buy a used washer and dryer and have them installed at the shop. Do your own laundry. You will need to have a product system down so you can maximize profit and labor costs speeding it up putting more money in your pocket. Stay organized in the shop so your not looking for this or that. Do inspections prior to booking so you can do a game plan before the actual detail. If your doing the labor don't over book yourself. It's a slow process building up your business. I focus on quality and low volume with my business. This is a PT business for me so when I book a job it's one car at a time. I finish that one then start another. Most of my clients are word of mouth from friends and family so they hear about my work and the experience that they have an idea of what my service is like and they see first hand results when they sit in a care I detail. It's free advertising but it's also the most effective. Building my client base slowly is fine with me
 
Thank you, indetail. I was curious about the wheel cleaning thing. I'm thinking a dedicated chrom cleaner or just one dedicated all surface cleaner. Optimum power clean has been my go to product for almost everything
 
jonn127 said:
Thank you, indetail. I was curious about the wheel cleaning thing. I'm thinking a dedicated chrom cleaner or just one dedicated all surface cleaner. Optimum power clean has been my go to product for almost everything
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I'm not sure where you're going with this? Are you talking about using OPC as a wheel cleaner too? If so you will go broke fast. OPC is nice but if you're running volume then you need volume chemicals. Don't waste your time & money with fancy wheel cleaners, go straight to a safe acid based wheel cleaner such as Duragloss All Wheel Cleaner. If you buy that in bulk such as 5, 30, or 55 gallon containers you will save a lot of money. An acid based wheel cleaner is not ideal for daily use but if you're doing the car once it doesn't really matter. There are other alternatives such as high pH wheel cleaners but acid is fast. Just don't forget to neutralize the surface.
 
Oops, sorry no I don't use it for wheels, more for just interior work.

Good lord you can buy 55 gallon drums of stuff? I definitely have some more research to do. I need to transition from a take your time, paint correction kind of thing to a more get them in and get them out frame of mind. I understand that the bulk will be the quick jobs, I just need to learn the most efficient way to do that.
 
I second the recommendation on dura gloss all wheel cleaner. It's a great product. As far as interiors go, a steamer will def save time and do a great job but you need a quality steamer if you will. If you are doing multiple vehicles a day I would suggest a continuous fill so you can fill it up with waters you go. A good quality unit goes for. $700 +.
 
An hour for an interior is reasonable especially for daily drivers. Tornado black is pretty awesome but you'll need a good size air compressor to run it. It works great on most everything from interior to wheels. I just don't think your going to save all that much time cleaning interiors.

If 4 hours is your average on small cars then you're spending 3 hours on exterior. Try an AIO like Meg's D156 to polish and protect might help save some time.

Eliminate the polish step all together is the only way to cut your time in half. Wash dry hit with a spray wax clean interior move on.
 
Get a buddy to help you out for the interior job and you can handle the exterior.
 
Didn t know that we could buy in bulks , much cheaper that way . Thanx rwright .
 
rwright said:
I'm not sure where you're going with this? Are you talking about using OPC as a wheel cleaner too? If so you will go broke fast. OPC is nice but if you're running volume then you need volume chemicals. Don't waste your time & money with fancy wheel cleaners, go straight to a safe acid based wheel cleaner such as Duragloss All Wheel Cleaner. If you buy that in bulk such as 5, 30, or 55 gallon containers you will save a lot of money. An acid based wheel cleaner is not ideal for daily use but if you're doing the car once it doesn't really matter. There are other alternatives such as high pH wheel cleaners but acid is fast. Just don't forget to neutralize the surface.
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What is used to neutralize the acids
 
Lol, never heard of some one cleaning a wheel without rinsing it.
 
As far as the steamers go, What are peoples thoughts on how much wear and tear it actually saves on your body?
 
What exactly does "running it" mean..?..I hope you guys have a business plan and an attorney before you start worrying about products.
 
Well we aren't going to just be jumping in head first without a clue, the owners have been self employed for quite some time and are very succesful. Its still a ways off for me to do this, we are still trying to figure out a fair way to do this for all 3 of us. Too many details to get into here.
As far as products go, even if I do this full time thing or not, I will still be detailing cars cause I love it. So any product that I get would eventually be used. I'm just not jumping into 55 gallon drums of duragloss yet.
 
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