Volume shop owners

[PinnacleAutoCT]

I'm looking for any input from owners of volume detailing operations. Any info as to how you got started, acquired accounts, found and trained employees, processes/time per vehicle, sales numbers, etc are appreciated.

I had a couple dealership accounts a while back but got out of that end of the business. I'm considering looking for a shop close to a large auto auction surrounded by smaller dealerships, and hiring employees to handle that work while occasionally doing my own high end work.

With my previous accounts I finally got the working time down to around three hours for an average car. This included a vac/blowout, full interior cleaning and quick dressing, ext wash/decon (nanoskin) and light polishing with the Rupes 21 & HD Speed topped with Meg's D156. I dressed the tires and trim with Meg's ASD and cleaned the door jams, and that was it.

I would love to know what people typically do for employees, as it seems to be tough to keep them classified as independent contractors due to not being able to tell them how to do the job, only being able to check for completeness, having their own supplies, etc.

 

[jarred767]

I'm looking for any input from owners of volume detailing operations. Any info as to how you got started, acquired accounts, found and trained employees, processes/time per vehicle, sales numbers, etc are appreciated.

I had a couple dealership accounts a while back but got out of that end of the business. I'm considering looking for a shop close to a large auto auction surrounded by smaller dealerships, and hiring employees to handle that work while occasionally doing my own high end work.

With my previous accounts I finally got the working time down to around three hours for an average car. This included a vac/blowout, full interior cleaning and quick dressing, ext wash/decon (nanoskin) and light polishing with the Rupes 21 & HD Speed topped with Meg's D156. I dressed the tires and trim with Meg's ASD and cleaned the door jams, and that was it.

When you mention volume, what kind of volume are you talking about? There's not too many guys on here that are big volume shops. It seems like most pro detailers on the forums are mobile single-guy operations or small shops with one or two employees at most. I'm just a one-man operation and only do retail type work for individuals, so I can't really be of too much help. Maybe one of the guys that has a medium-ish sized shop might chime in with a little bit better advice.

Good Luck with it :xyxthumbs:

 

[PinnacleAutoCT]

What I'm thinking of is a larger shop with 5+ employees, I know it's rare on these forums.

 

[FinishingTouchA]

I'm not quite a 5 employee shop, but my business does do a lot more production style work than correction work like most on here. So below I'll respond the best I can to your questions Answers in Bold

how you got started
Started as a mobile operation 3 years ago, always worked another part or full time job, detailing was more or less side income. This year I moved into a shop and hired 2 employees because the location blew up my business

acquired accounts
Most of my work remains retail but I do have a few business accounts. One is a construction company my dad is the fleet manager for so that was kind of handed to me. The other construction companies I know some of the employees and that helped but I also just called and pitched my pricing, consistency, turnaround time, and location. I quickly found out dealerships are a waste of my efforts. Yes, if your employees can bust out dealer cars then there is a profit. But the dealership will never be happy unless you do a $500 job for $125. And even at 5 hours per detail there is so little profit after all your costs that the effort and headache just isn't worth it. My biggest problem with that was I provide a quality service to retail customers and training employees to cut corners on some vehicles and do quality work on others just causes issues. On another note RV dealerships are awesome, high profit margins.

found and trained employees
One of my biggest issues. If you're doing strictly production work then you should be fine, but with trying to train some correction work you need to find someone with good critical thinking skills and above all else has a desire to learn because they love cars.

processes/time per vehicle
First 6 months with employees was spent having them record times for each job, I ranked each vehicle on a scale of 1-5 and put it all into a spreadsheet. Then built my price sheet based on these numbers and going rate for these detailing services. My bread and butter is HD Speed and full interior details (My Mytee is starting to get really tired)

sales numbers
I haven't gotten around to heavy analytics and where to focus my business, right now I'm more focused on making sure each job is profitable and finding good employees.


I had a couple dealership accounts a while back but got out of that end of the business. I'm considering looking for a shop close to a large auto auction surrounded by smaller dealerships, and hiring employees to handle that work while occasionally doing my own high end work.

With my previous accounts I finally got the working time down to around three hours for an average car. This included a vac/blowout, full interior cleaning and quick dressing, ext wash/decon (nanoskin) and light polishing with the Rupes 21 & HD Speed topped with Meg's D156. I dressed the tires and trim with Meg's ASD and cleaned the door jams, and that was it.
An average full interior detail with extracting usually runs 4-5 hours alone. But I don't cut corners on interiors ever. And a wash and AIO is generally another 3 hours. Not sure what kind of vehicles you're doing or if you extract or not but I can't see you doing these kind of numbers if you're working HD Speed properly with 3-4 passes at a slow/medium pace.

I would love to know what people typically do for employees, as it seems to be tough to keep them classified as independent contractors due to not being able to tell them how to do the job, only being able to check for completeness, having their own supplies, etc.
Yeah, you must hire on employees, insure them and everything... no way around it.