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Auto Reconditioning

Auto Reconditioning Services

Detailing businesses must adapt to survive in tough economies like we’ve been dealing with for the past five years.

Sadly, the idea of simply doing a good job detailing customer cars is not enough anymore.

People want a “good deal” but they also don’t want to deal with the hassles of finding different companies to provide different services.

Time is money as they say and with the overworked consumer, many of your auto detailing customers just don’t have time to bring their car to different companies for servicing.

This is where you can benefit incredibly by adding Auto Reconditioning Services to your existing auto detail shop or mobile detailing business. Auto Reconditioning Services are “specialty” services that can dramatically improve your profitability.

Unfortunately, most of your customers don’t realize how much work goes into great detail.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t consider getting it detailed from the fly-by-night guy that operates out of his home in their neighborhood. Those are the people you are competing with. And one of the basic things you need to understand about the detailing business is once you decide to go down the path of competing on price, you will never recover.

You will forever be known as the discount detail guy and you might as well add a car wash to your business. So instead of cutting your throat by lowering your prices, why not add some services that your customers will gladly pay for?

As far as your customers are concerned, these are all services that only “experts” can offer. I’m talking about auto reconditioning services such as :

Micro Paint Chip Repair

Bumper Painting and Scratch Repair

Interior Repair for Leather, Vinyl and Upholstery

Carpet Burns Repair and Carpet Dyeing

Paintless Dent Repair

Window Tinting Installation and Removal

Windshield Repair

And More…

Adding these auto reconditioning services won’t cost you a massive investment of time or money. Most of the time you spend will be simply perfecting your skills, just like you already do with your buffing and other specialty services that you offer now.

The difference you will notice is how much more money your customers are willing to pay for these “specialty” auto reconditioning services versus your standard services.

These types of services are very profitable and will provide you with the added income and profits that your business needs to thrive in this any economic environment.

Detailer Transporter Plates

Detailer Transporter Plates

Transporting cars is an easy thing to do as long as your customer has their own license plate on the vehicle.

Unfortunately, doing business with individual customers is much different from wholesale or commercial work. When you start doing commercial detailing services for auto dealerships, car auctions, and even corporate fleet detailing, your needs change quickly in one major area of business – transporting vehicles.

Adding detailer transporter plates to your business sounds like a great idea until you start working on it. It’s expensive, complicated, expensive, and did I already say expensive? Yes, it’s going to cost you.

Commercial detailing work is a great profit center for any shop or mobile detailer. Provided you are able to ramp up your ability to do higher volume work and maintain consistent quality at the same time.

So let’s discuss the first step in the long process of getting started doing commercial or wholesale detailing work – obtaining detailer transporter plates for your business.

And don’t worry if you don’t understand a part of this. I explain everything in detail and start with the basics.

What are Detailer Transporter Plates?

Every vehicle on the road needs to be registered and insured. Each state has a DMV or Department of Motor Vehicles that regulates this process and issues a license plate to identify each vehicle. The DMV’s also have temporary commercial license plates for businesses that need to transport vehicles without the hassle of obtaining new license plates each time a car is moved. These license plates have names like Dealership, Repair/Towing, Transporter, and Detailer/Transporter.

Differences Between Transporter Plates and Standard License Plates

There is an insurance term called Care, Custody, and Control or the 3-C’s. In a standard vehicle license plate, the registration and insurance are tied to that vehicle owner and identified by that license plate. With a Transporter plate, the 3-C’s move with that plate, and subsequently the registration and insurance also go with that license plate. So it does not matter the vehicle, as long as that license plate is properly maintained and current, while also being used by an employee of the business that owns the plate, then that car is legally allowed to be driven.

Car Salespeople Use Dealership Plates Every Day

If you’ve ever visited a car dealership and took a vehicle on a test drive, then you’ve seen these commercial temporary license plates in action. Auto dealerships don’t have license plates for each of their cars. It would be a nightmare to keep track of everything.

So you pick out a car you like and the salesman grabs a dealer or dealership plate and puts it in the back window. Then you take the car for a spin around the block. Car salespeople use dealership plates every day.

The dealer plate is convenient because it allows car salespeople to use multiple vehicles without needing individual license plates and insurance on each.

The Insurance Goes with the License Plate

Since the insurance goes with the license plate aka dealer plate, it’s easily transferable between vehicles. Move the license plate and you move the insurance to another vehicle.

That’s the point of these types of license plates. That dealer plate insures that vehicle while the salesman is driving it.

So how does this help you? It doesn’t. You can’t secure dealer plates because you don’t own an auto dealership. I’m using it as an example for you to understand how the plates are utilized.

No, You Can’t Borrow Dealer Plates

I know you are thinking that. Right? I asked myself when I first went down this road. Why can’t I just borrow one of their plates? I’m moving cars for the dealership after all. But no, you can’t borrow dealer plates. It doesn’t matter that you are working with them, it only covers dealership employees.

None of the benefits of the dealer plates cover you as a contractor doing services for the dealership.

So what are your options? As a professional detailing business, you can choose to bring your equipment to the dealership in the form of a mobile detailing rig or van.

Or you can transport the vehicles to your detail shop to complete the work. To do so you need to insure the vehicles you are transporting.

Care, Custody, and Control

This is why most dealerships want you to have either “Repair/Towing” license plates, or “Detailer Transporter Plates”.

Both license plates serve to temporarily transfer your garage keepers liability insurance to the vehicle you are driving while you are in care, custody, and control of the vehicle. Remember the 3C’s from the above section and when I mentioned it on our business liability insurance page?

Insurance is tough when transporting cars. It depends on the state you reside in.

Detailers and Repair/Towing Plates

I’m not kidding when I say that DMV’s don’t like auto detailers. They don’t want you transporting vehicles.

For example, in Pennsylvania, you can’t get a Repair/Towing plate if you have the word “detail” in your name.

The government has its reasons for this. I’m simply relaying information.

Specialized Transporter License Plate

Although repair/towing plates are preferred, there is an option for detailing and reconditioning businesses. Most states have a specialized transporter license plate or a detailing transporter plate.

So why, if you own an auto detailing shop, would you want a repair/towing plate? Especially if states already make a special plate for detailers?

Let’s first start with this comment. If you only do car detailing, then you should get a detailer transporter plate.

If you also do other vehicle services, like reconditioning, paint repair, interior repair, dent pulls, bumper repairs, etc., then you should be able to utilize a repair/towing plate.

Ultimately, the repair/towing plate is better and more flexible for your needs.

Talk to Your State DMV Office

Either way, talk to your state DMV office that handles these types of license plates. They will tell you exactly which plates you are eligible to obtain.

Here are a few reasons the Repair/Towing plate is preferred if you can get it:

  • You can use them 24 hours a day versus transporter plates being limited to use only during your business hours. A big problem if you happen to be driving a car beyond your regular hours of operation;
  • They are easier to get since the DMV is much more stringent on detailing applications than they are for mechanics shops and towing companies who use these plates most of the time;
  • Many states are phasing out the transporter plates and just telling detailers not to move vehicles. Amazing how bureaucrats can think their solutions are so easy to live with, isn’t it?

Detailer Transporter Plates

The concept of auto detailer transporter plates was specifically designed for transporting cars between auctions and dealerships.

Auto Detailers picked them up when the state DMV’s didn’t think they were actually considered repair shops. So they rejected the detail business applications for repair/towing plates.

Unfortunately, this means that many detail shops with these detailer transporter plates use these plates beyond their intended purpose when they transport cars between dealerships and their own shops.

Transporting Cars

Unfortunately, the only way you can get auto detailer transporter plates is to convince a dealership to do a contract with you that says you will be transporting cars for them.

The application specifically says that you can’t be driving their cars between your shop and the dealership. So essentially, the DMV doesn’t want the auto detailers moving cars.

Denying car detailing shops the use of these plates is their way of making it more difficult for detail shops to do their work.

Auto Mechanics shops have repair/towing plates.

Auto Dealers have dealer or dealership plates.

Automotive auctions have transporter plates that they use to transport vehicles between dealers and the auction warehouses.

Commercial Profits Come with a Price

Unfortunately, those profits come with a price in the form of new insurance, equipment, and a host of additional headaches if you don’t know what you are doing.

From scaling the volume of cars you can complete per day to increasing the number of employees to be able to handle that volume. It takes an organized approach to expand your business in this way. And the first step is to start the process to obtain detailer transporter plates.

It’s absolutely not easy to get these types of commercial license plates. But I’m going to give you some background, teach you about the different types of license plates, cover insurance requirements, and the step-by-step process for getting your own detailing transporter plates.

The Key to Profitability with Car Dealers

Commercial detailing can be rewarding if you are careful to focus on providing solutions for the pain points of your potential customers.

For example, with car dealerships, a major issue with them is where you plan on detailing their vehicles. Space is a premium and they won’t just hand over a repair bay. Those make too much money for the dealership.

Once you see the problem, you realize the solution. The key to profitability with car dealers is the ability to transport their cars.

This creates the need for your shop to obtain specialized license plates. And that just opened another Pandora’s box of issues for your business.

We Qualified as a Body Shop

So auto detailers are in a weird limbo area between these other types of automotive businesses.

My company didn’t have as many problems because we did so many types of reconditioning services that we qualified as a body shop.

We also got around a lot of these issues by simply building up our mobile detailing crews and sending them to the dealer locations to do the work at their facility.

If you do get transporter plates you need to make sure you are insured with garage keepers and vehicle transport insurance on EACH and every plate you own. That will run you about $1,400 to $1,800 per plate.

Plus the state makes you get the insurance BEFORE they even look at your application. That makes it fun since it takes them over a month to process it.

You Can’t Be In Business Without Being Properly Insured

The auto detailing business is like any other. You can’t be in business without being properly insured. The reason you have insurance is to make sure you are covered in the event something bad happens.

So by cutting corners like many detail shop owners do, eventually you will get burned in some scenario that you might have thought sounded good but in reality just doesn’t work.

When securing auto detailer transporter plates for your shop, you need to make sure the insurance part is set up and maintained correctly.

When Naming Your Business, Don’t Use The Word Detail

***TIP*** When naming your business, don’t use the word detail anywhere in your legal name.

Call your business something along the lines of Joe’s Vehicle Reconditioning or Auto Recon Experts. Or many other variations that don’t include detailing in the name.

This way when you apply for a Repair/Towing plate and they ask you what you do you can honestly tell them that you recondition vehicles, which is entirely true.

Set it Up Right From The Start

Too many detail shops start out just detailing, but by the time they get big enough to need something like detailer transporter plates, only a small portion of their business is actually performing actual car detailing.

So keep this in mind early on when you are naming your business or when you eventually incorporate, consider slightly changing the name.

I hope you have success in securing your transport plates. They are hard to get but definitely advantageous. Most of your competition won’t have the knowledge or the financial resources to get these plates. So they offer you a definite competitive advantage in your local area.

I hope this overview of detailer transporter plates is helpful and informative. As I said, it’s a long and expensive process, but it’s so worth it if you can manage it.

Auto Carpet Cleaning

Auto Carpet Cleaning

Auto-Carpet-Cleaning-ADG

A professional car detail isn’t considered complete until the carpets are perfect. Unfortunately, that’s not always an easy task. Any detailer that has lived through the wonderful experience of cleaning and detailing a minivan used primarily as a bus for numerous children, will attest to that. And they will even regale you with stories about the experience if you ask.

Two Categories of Car Owners

I learned early on that car owners primarily fall into one of two categories. People who love cars and people who look at cars as nothing more than a mode of transportation. Minivan owners tend to fall into the latter. When they describe the minivan, they say things like, “it’s better than taking the bus.” It’s a means to an end. Getting them and their shit from point A to point B without breaking down.

Raised a Trash Panda in Their Minivan

Nobody loves their minivan. If ever there was a vehicle created for a single-minded purpose, it’s that. Hauling around the entire family. Check. Hauling the groceries. Check.

Don’t feel sorry for the customer while listening to them blame their children for the disgusting smell and ridiculous condition of their family bus. If they respected the vehicle, it would stay clean. So you smile politely as you double your normal rate because you are fairly certain they raised a trash panda in their minivan from birth to adult.

Charge More. Your Time is Valuable.

Don’t feel bad about charging more. Your time is valuable. And don’t accept their sob story about not being able to afford your price. If they are willing to let you spend hours of your day cleaning up their mess that accumulated over many years, then they should pay you for your time. If they balk at your rates and walk, then let them try and find another detailer. Personally, I would rather stay in bed than live through those kinds of horror stories.

Old School Detailers

Old school detailers have inferior equipment. Most of them just used an old shop vac, scrub brush, and a bucket. It’s a horrible way to scrub carpets and isn’t even close to a professional auto carpet cleaning, but they managed somehow. Other less professional detailers like to spray a chemical on your carpets, pressure washes the dirt out, and then drill small holes in your floorboards to let the water drain out. I know you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I’ve actually seen several car dealerships do this with really bad carpets they didn’t want to replace. It works, but the customer isn’t really happy when they can’t seem to figure out why their carpets get really wet during heavy rains when they drive their car.

Modern Technology for Auto Carpet Cleaning

That brings us to modern technology for auto carpet cleaning that all professional detailers should be using in this day and age. Professional heated carpet extractors will run about $1,500. So if your detailer does not have one, go somewhere else. If they can’t afford $1,500 for equipment that will increase their productivity by a few hundred percents then you don’t want your car near them. Heated carpet extractors will mix water and cleaning chemicals and heat that solution to 210 degrees. The handle attachment is for shooting the heated solution into your carpets and lifting the dirt back out with a very powerful suction system. It’s by far the fastest and best method for achieving the best results in professional quality auto carpet cleaning services.

How a Pro Handles Auto Carpet Cleaning

The reason you go to an experienced detailer instead of a newbie is because of things like this. Cleaning carpets in cars isn’t as easy as the public thinks it is. A good detailer will know how to pre-treat the carpet with specialized cleaners. Spots and stains are also treated with lifting chemicals to remove the stain once the heat hits it. We would also use a small buffer that has a scrub brush attached to it for really tough to clean carpets. This is how a pro handles auto carpet cleaning, how does your detail shop do it?

Training and Practice Equals Expertise

Everybody believes they can be a car detailer. Think about each time you see people in other professions doing their job. How often do you think to yourself, “wow, that’s an easy job that I could do in my sleep.” Clearly, you aren’t the only person that thinks that. Right now someone somewhere is watching a pro detailer working on a car and thinking the same thing.

The problem is that anyone that thinks this is always wrong. You might think it’s incredibly simple to work at McDonald’s. That anyone can do it. But could you? I’m a smart, successful business guy. But I know if I walked into a McDonald’s and was asked to cook burgers, it would take me a while. I’m sure there is some big button to heat up the fryer, but is there also a temperature setting? And where are the burgers? Is there a button to push that tells me how long to cook it?

It’s all about training and practice, which leads to expertise.

The fact is, without training for that burger-flipping position, we would all be lost. It’s the same for detailing a vehicle. And auto carpet cleaning has both a science and art to doing it right.

Poor Technique and Equipment Leads to Mold

A good car detailer knows to pre-spot sections of carpet that aren’t visible. We do this to test for color separation during the carpet cleaning process. Certain chemical cleaners can suck the color right out of many types of carpet.

And saturating carpet with water can develop mold if it’s not extracted quickly. Mold is a surefire way to get a claim filed against your detail shop liability insurance. Nobody wants the smell nor the bad health implications of a mold spore breakout within their vehicle.

Mold is one of those issues that you want to always be on the lookout to protect yourself against. I trained all my team members to know what mold smells like. This training helped numerous times. Like when we received a vehicle from a dealer client late in the afternoon one day. That seemed weird since they always dropped off in the morning or we went to them and picked-up. When my manager got into the vehicle, he immediately smelled the mold. I did too when I checked it.

I told the client we weren’t willing to accept responsibility for the mold. So we didn’t touch the vehicle until the dealer acknowledged the mold problem in writing and, more importantly, that it wasn’t us that caused it. We recommended that the front carpets be pulled out. The dealer wasn’t happy, but they agreed to it. When we pulled it, everything under the carpet was covered in mold. Someone had attempted to clean the auto carpet and saturated it badly in the past.

Properly Insure Your Detailing Business

This is also a good time to remind you to update your business liability insurance. Protecting your detailing business with the proper insurance is incredibly important. Plus, you want to be ready when a customer calls and requests you to fax or email them a certificate of insurance to prove you are insured. Savvy customers understand the importance of insurance coverage, especially if they have higher-end luxury vehicles.

Check out our proper insurance page for specifics as to what you should be looking for and asking about when it comes to insurance at your local shop. Mishandling your auto carpet cleaning job can result in destroyed carpets. How do you feel about mold and mildew, foul-smelling odor, and carpets that need completely ripped out and replaced?

Auto Carpet Cleaning

Your customers are spending good money to have their car professionally detailed. Make sure their car is fully protected by the proper equipment and insurance to do the job right. Auto carpet cleaning should make it look great when it’s done.

Dyeing Packages for Carpet

If the carpets don’t look great, you should recommend dyeing the color back to a new look again. Most detailers have dyeing packages for carpet, just don’t let them use the can spray paint colors on your carpets. It rubs off eventually and it looks horrible. Injectable dyes are better and look more like the real thing. Of course, just starting with professional auto carpet cleaning is the way to go, but there are additional more advanced repair and cleaning options if they are needed.

Check out of our AutoDetailGuide E-News Subscription.

Pressure Washing Services

Pressure Washing Services

Pressure Washing Services

Another great area to market as a mobile detailer is in the pressure washing services industry.  Many detailers forget about this end of the business, but it’s very profitable. You are a mobile detailer and that’s your main business, but you’ve already got the equipment on board to do pressure washing services, so why not?

Because pressure washing services aren’t your only source of income you can cherry-pick the best jobs and leave the crappy ones to the guys who do that for a living.  You can market your pressure washing services to restaurants to clean off their sidewalks, awnings and dumpster areas.  Office buildings to clean sidewalks and lower level walls that get dirty.  Another area of pressure washing services to consider is graffiti removal, but we address that in more detail in another update article.

With pressure washing services, you charge by the square foot like your competition.  The fact that this isn’t your main business though allows you to be more competitive with lower rates and flat-rate pricing based on what you believe it will cost to do the job.  If you are already loaded-up and trying to find some cars to do because you are slow with your detailing business, stop by some local businesses and offer pressure washing services at a discount.  Most restaurants hire pressure washing services on a regular basis. So if you can prove you’re insured and you can offer excellent pricing, then you might have a shot and getting some side work.

These businesses will appreciate the fact that this isn’t your main line of work as the reason you can charge less. You have to remember many times the low bid is looked at as a low-quality unreliable business, so you should explain why you can keep your prices lower than the competition.  If you are offering quality pressure washing services and lower costs, you will get the business.

Keep in mind also that when I say low prices, I don’t mean the bottom of the barrel.  Many times if you can beat your competition by even 10% you’ll get the work simply because of your price.  If you look professional with a logo t-shirt uniform, offer a solid and concise estimate and contract forms and give them a good price, then you will cover all your bases.  This is what they get from their other pressure washing services vendors and what they expect from you.

The other important item to remember with pressure washing services is that you make sure you don’t take enough jobs to kick your total amount of this type of business to over 70% of your total income.  If that happens then your insurance company will consider you a pressure washing services business instead of a mobile detailer and either drop you or dramatically increase your business liability insurance premiums.  Neither of these is a good thing.  Insurance companies don’t like businesses that only offer pressure washing services because there is a lot of potential damage you can do to a property with a pressure washer.  So it’s hard to insure pressure washing services.  So be careful and watch the income level from that part of the business.

Pressure washing services are an easy business to start.  This is why everybody with a pick-up truck and a home depot special power washer is now an expert in the pressure washing services industry.  Mobile detailing services are much more intricate and a lot more training is necessary to get good at your job.  Pressure washing services offer a guy pulling a pressure washing wand trigger and then cleaning things with water pressure and possibly some degreaser if it’s dirty.  Don’t get me wrong, there are things you want to stay away from and leave to the power washing pros.  Things like new concrete can be scarred and marked.  Brick cleaning for new construction is always easy to damage.  And you may be excited about the prospect of larger jobs like shopping center sidewalks that may look easy, but it’s not.  Try spending all night walking behind surface cleaners hooked to hot water pressure washers.  The hours are very long, the work is labor-intensive and overall it generally really sucks.  So with some jobs, you are going to want to leave those to the guys who choose to make that their main source of income.  You stick to the detailing and pick and choose some profitable side pressure washing jobs to handle and you’ll do great!  Pressure washing services are a great add on service and can be very profitable if you do it right.

Home Auto Detailing Tips

Home Auto Detailing Tips

So you want to detail your car and need some home auto detailing tips?  It’s not quite as easy as it looks. Expect to spend upwards of 4 to 6 hours detailing your vehicle. It sounds like a long time, but when you see everything that goes into a detail, then that $150+ that you pay your local car detailer doesn’t seem like a lot anymore.

We have developed a good five (5) step process as part of our home auto detailing system.  You can follow this to bring your car to like-new condition. This was developed over years experience and trial and error, so we’ve basically perfected the home auto detailing process at this point.  Click on each step below and you will have one page that deals with the step you are working on. Print it out for a reference to use while you are detailing the vehicle.

You may still need additional tools and equipment that are necessary to perform a car detail at home.

Step 1: Engine Cleaning

Step 2: Exterior Washing

Step 3: Interior Cleaning and Detailing

Step 4: Exterior Buffing and Waxing

Our process has been refined over years of high volume detailing. When you do this day in and day out you definitely get good at it and much faster.  So try it a few times and let us know how it goes for you.  Home Auto Detailing Tips from your friends at AutoDetailingGuide.com.