Why not purchase a really nice floor jack, a good set of heavy duty jack stands, a pair of ramps, and a good creeper? Wouldn’t those serve your needs better?
You sound like someone who knows what he is doing, but how often do you really need a lift?
If it weren’t for the liability issue I think you could make a profit.
benzman, I agree with Mike on this one. This business model has many flaws. For example:
-How do you ensure the people you rent to have the skills to make the intended repair?
-What do you do when you discover your customer is in over his head?
-How do you collect rent from someone who owns a beater worth $150, has abandoned his car in your bay (in pieces), and owes you $400 in rent?
benzman, even if it were a “low overhead venture,” the idea has been tested and it has failed. If you can figure out how to make it work, I encourage you to do so. Prove us all wrong like the guy who started FedEx. His professor told him his idea would fail because there was no demand for overnight delivery. Where would he be now if he has listened to his professor?
I looked at the prices charged buy this Utah garage and the first thing that came to mind is the oldest trick in the salesmans cookbook it is called “lossleader”, these are just prices to get you in the door and the WHAMO you get hit with reality.
Unless the cost of living is really low on Utah how can a bussiness supply a fully trained, fully eqipped mechanic for 25.00 and hour, that was very close to my share alone in 2005.
Just for the record, if your goal is to emphasize, using bold, italic, or [i]both[/i] would be more effective. It really does read like you are shouting the capitalized words.
Real good comment from Mr Pixel, nice to read from someone who is not hung-up on the insurance issue. I know of an old car group in Berlin, Germany. They rent a large shed where they store and work on their classics, everything from a 1960’s VW worth a grand to a Mercedes SL300 worth a lot more. It is a great social scene, a club really. Guys who live in flats or houses with no garage can get togeather for a relax and a beer and do what the like best, work on and polish the old car.
I am doing this in n/e pa.Here are the problems I have.1/ they never had all the tools they needed.2/ They for the most part did not have the ability to do the job.3/ they had to go back to the parts store and had no way there.I bought a building as a investement that had a empty space were I put in seven lifts four two post and three four post.I have tire machines,and work tables with vises and little odd and ends.My cost for the lifts and instlation was 15.000 (used lifts).I set it up as a small company and charged 750 for rent with the utilties ins. ect. ect. it was 1500-2000 a month I have to be here when coustomers are here.I am open at night and weakends.mon-fri5-10 sat 7-6 sun10-6.I liked being here and have a space for me with my own lift and what not.I charge 15 an hour the two post lifts have people waiting for them most of the time I am making a lot of money.I do not advertise as I have more coustomers than lifts.there are problems but it can be done.I lucked out on the building haveing this empty space that was not being used.If this was a larger city my cost would be much higher.Most shops charge 50-90 an hour here.The best guys are the ones that just want to change there own oil and rotate there tires,putz around a little maybe wash and wax.The young kids with these tunner imports and such always have cars sitting out side in my lot (fenced in cost 5 a day to keep it here).There are down sides but add it up and you would be surprised.I have hade guys that were good coustomers get together and rent a old service station with two lifts in it for 500 a month just so they could use them when ever.It all depends on your cost for building and lifts ect.my ins is 3780 a year for this space and that is alot of coverage I have.
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Vipper-ABC, how long have you been operating this business?? Do you have an e-mail address that I could contact you at. I would love to ask you a few questions if you had the Time. I have been looking into this Idea for a while now. -Names Justin and you can e-mail me @ jjohnson667@yahoo.com if you like, Thanks!
Recently I purchased a former auto repair shop in Trenton New Jersey with ten lifts, I was thinking if it would be profitable to rent each lifts to individual mechanic techs on a monthly basis, it’s similar how beauty salons & barbershops works, each tech pays for a chair, and has their own customers and following can I get some insight, and words of wisdom.
Liability insurance should be something to consider. I am sure there is a market for even DIY guys that would use the service. Hourly rental could be an option. Some I saw went for the hourly option, and it took them days. As long as they pay could be good.
These lifts are only rented to experience mechanic techs on a monthly basis with customers. I have nothing to do with their customers, only collect rent monthly, what’s your insights.
I have known 2 shop owners who rented out space to other mechanics but both were well established and profitable and their renters were highly qualified, well equipped with tools and had a good following and wouldn’t compete with the owners established customer base.
Do you have an idea what was the rental ?
I know a couple places that kinda do that. They own this huge garage, but separate it out. Then rent each section out to other mechanics. But there’s clearly a separation of businesses.
Problem I see is you now will have mechanics working in the same space that are competing against each other. You get one mechanic who’s unscrupulous - it’ll bring down the rest of the mechanics. And it’s bad enough for mechanics to loose tools to other mechanics that work in the same business…I can only imagine it’ll be worse in this type of situation.
Opening a new business that is as likely to fail in this current environment is a really bad idea.
Even if someone gave a rental charge it would mean nothing . Your location , local property taxes , utility , rates , insurance coverage cost , disposal costs for replaced parts and at least one person to run the main office all will have to be determined .
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You need to determine what your monthly costs will be. You may still be liable for damages for work done inside your building. If a lift fails and there is vehicle damage or injury, you are liable. Who provides shop-wide services? Do you provide compressed air, water, electricity, and heat? You need to estimate your costs and add a fair profit for using your facility. Don’t make a WAG, determine what you expect your costs, including mortgage, taxes, facility maintenance, and the other items I mentioned are. I probably missed something. Maybe you or someone here can add to the list.
@jtsanders gave you great advice.
Before you open a business - you should know exactly how much money you need to bring in daily to keep the doors open. @jtsanders pointed out a list of some of the things you need to know. As he said…don’t make a WAG. All these costs can be estimated very closely.
Where a lot of businesses fail is when there’s an unforeseen cost. Many small businesses estimate all the costs when all conditions are perfect.
If you can’t maintain daily/monthly costs with just 50% capacity, then I wouldn’t do it. It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever be at 100% most of the time. 50% to cover costs…and anything over that is profit. You need to anticipate problems…equipment failure, power outages…theft and vandalism (are you adding security camera’s?)…and a slew of others. If you haven’t owned a garage/business before, then talk to someone who has done it successfully. Pick their brain.
You’re both right. I’d be willing to bet @MikeInNH’s math is right about $50 an hour being what you’d need to charge just to keep the lights on, absent insurance payments. And I’d be willing to bet that insurance would be expensive, so you’d really probably have to charge more like $65 or more an hour.
Well, I pay my mechanic $65 an hour, and he does all the work for me and I don’t have to get my hands dirty, so that’s a losing proposition.
And as others have touched on, even if you could get people to pay that, you’d still have trouble. You’d be renting the place out to people who are too cheap or broke to take it to an actual mechanic. They’ll rent it for a couple of hours to do the axles, and then discover that they busted the ball joint pulling the axle out, and by the way they can’t get the axle back in the transmission because they don’t know how.
Now you’ve got an undriveable car on the lift, and an owner who’s panicking because now he has to go buy a ball joint that he hadn’t budgeted for, and who is going to be unable or reluctant to keep paying for the hours it’s sitting on the lift past his reserved time. And meanwhile, now you’ve got a furious customer who was supposed to rent that lift after the first guy, but can’t because the lift isn’t empty.
That’s why Tom and Ray ended up pitching in on jobs, to get the lifts clear for the next customer. But what that meant was that they were charging lower rates than mechanics and then ended up working as mechanics anyway which was sub-optimal to say the least.
FYI @shadowfax, @Baxter_s_Dad posted that in March of 2010 and hasn’t been on the site since 2016
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