Mobile Truck Washing, Case Study


Most folks in the pressure washing business are happier to do business cleaning concrete or flat work, because it appears to be easy. Some do both fleet truck washing and concrete, which makes sense. But what some do not understand is once you are totally efficient at truck washing you can surpass the dollars per hour that those in concrete cleaning generally charge. I have been washing fleets of trucks for over 12 years. What I have found is that our car wash guys www.carwashguys.com which is a mobile car wash business ended up being a fleet washing business and not only for car washing. This is because customers needed services and kept calling and we were able to do the work as good as any company could.

This is really okay as long as we were making money. It also did not make sense to leave that amount of business still on the table made if customers were willing to pay top dollar for services. At the time when we started to get really heavy into fleet washing we were still transferring our independent contractors into franchisees. The car washing crews love the interaction with the customers and the people part of the business. Exactly what you do not get when you wash a fleet of trucks when they are all parked and nobody is around.

The introvert loves washing fleet vehicles because they do not have to walk into businesses and act all happy like the UPS or fed Ex person to get keys to do auto detailing; whereas the extrovert loves to walk in and crack jokes and flirt with the receptionist. Many times we find that there are two different types of people (personalities), which work good in these different types of businesses. Every entrepreneur which is setting up teams of people to do services needs to be careful to place team members where they are the strongest. In this case it is obvious and it is not always like that; plus in this case study there are so many trucks to wash that once you start washing trucks there is no time to wash cars. Now on the other hand, if there is a non-owner operator or investor type owner then he/she might own both franchise businesses Car Wash Guys and Truck Wash Guys and make sure the truck managers of each type of work are of the proper personalities to make for good profit margin and happiness of employees. We had to separate this out of The Car Wash Guys original franchise due to the volume of work in both market sectors. We do offer a discount if the franchise buyer wants to do both and can demonstrate that they can handle it. Provided we can find those people who are dedicated to customer service for our franchise team. That's the biggest challenge. Look at our trucks: http://www.carwashguys.com/innews2.shtml

You can see by this case study that the market mix of a company and their ability to put teams froth which can maximize profits has to be done in such a way that makes sense and capitalizes on special teams or crews who can perform based on their personalities and individual skills. I certainly hope I have got you thinking here. In addition to this assignment I would like you to read; "The World On Time; history of FEDEX" by its founder Fred Smith.

"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs

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